Advancing Team Learning

Many scholars have observed that the structure of work in contemporary organizations is becoming increasingly team centric and that this structural shift is driven by pressures for organizational adaptation and innovation. This has prompted scholarly interest in the concept of team learning. Unfortunately, despite this rising interest, team learning as an area of theory development and research has been hampered by ongoing conceptual ambiguities and inconsistencies. In particular, learning processes and knowledge outcomes are often not distinguished clearly and are frequently treated interchangeably. Our goal is to articulate a clear conceptualization of team learning as a process and to distinguish team learning processes from team knowledge outcomes. We view this distinction as essential for advancing this important area of inquiry.