Questionario

COMPORTAMENTO ORGANIZACIONAL E GESTÃO, 2008, VOL. 14, N.º 2, 145-160

Development and validation of the Team Learning Questionnaire
Irene Bresó University of Valencia, Facultat de Psicología, Department of Social Psychology Francisco Javier Gracia University of Valencia, Facultat de Psicología, Department of Social Psychology Felisa Latorre University of Valencia, Facultat de Psicología,Department of Social Psychology José María Peiró University of Valencia, Facultat de Psicología, Department of Social Psychology

Abstract. Nowadays the organizational scenario is changing in several aspects that affect organization commitment. Team learning construct has emerged as a tool to deal with these changes and the dynamic nature of this situation. Although team learning has acquiredimportance in recent years, instruments to measure team learning should be developed. The aim of this paper is to develop and validate a team learning scale, the Team Learning Questionnaire, attending to four dimensions of team learning: Continued Improvement Seeking, Dialogue Promotion and Open Communication, Collaborative Learning, and Strategic and Proactive Leadership that Promote Learning. Resultsprovide evidence of the reliability and validity of the scale. Key words: Team learning, team learning questionnaire, team learning dimensions.

Introduction Teams are considered basic and strategic units in achieving organizational excellence (Guzzo, 1996; Kasl, Marsick & Dechant, 1997; King & Rowe, 1999; Senge, 1990; Van Offenbeek, 2001;

Address: Francisco Javier Gracía, UIPOT, Unidad deInvestigación de Picología de las Organizaciones y del Trabajo, Departamento de Psicología Social, Avda. Blasco Ibáñez, 21, 46010 València, Espanha. E-mail: Francisco.Gracia@uv.es The authors are grateful for the financial support of the Spanish Agency of Education and Science (SEJ2005-05375, within the CONSOLIDER Project SEJ2006-14086, and ENE2005-08619/CON).

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Yeo, 2003). An organization learns through actions and interactions that take place between people who are typically situated within smaller groups or teams (Edmonson, 2002). Through these teams making appropriate changes in how they do their work, an organization maintains its effectiveness in a changing world. In this sense, team learning is seen as a potential resource for theorganization in maintaining high levels of competitiveness in this complex and changing environment (Edmonson, 2002; McDougall & Beattie, 1995; Van Offenbeek, 2001; Yeo, 2002). A decade ago, Senge (1990) suggested that teams are the fundamental learning unit in an organization. However, although much has been written about teams and about learning in organizations, our understanding of learning in teamsremains limited (Edmonson, 1999). We agree with Edmonson (2002, p. 129) that “the implications of Senge’s (1990) proposition that teams are the unit of organizational learning have remained largely undeveloped, with limited empirical research on team learning in real organizations”. In this sense, the development of instruments to measure team learning becomes an urgent task if we want to contributeto better understanding of this phenomenon. Therefore, the main purpose of our study is to develop and validate a questionnaire to measure team learning that can be used in future empirical research to advance the knowledge about the antecedents and consequences of this relevant concept. This will be the main contribution of our study. Team learning definitions Due to the scarce empirical research,a widely accepted definition of team learning has not yet been developed. However, several definitions have already been provided. The earliest definition we found is the one by Kasl et al. (1997), who define team learning as a “process through which a group creates knowledge for its members, for itself as a system, and for others” (p. 229). This definition emphasizes the process of knowledge...