Cultura organizativa, aprendizaje grupal y rendimiento del equipo de trabajoun estudio aplicado al sector bancario

Zusammenfassung

In today's highly dynamic environment, organizational learning is considered a key factor of business success (Huber, 1991; Grant, 1996; Cheng, 2005; Kostopoulos and Bozionelos, 2011; Lee et al., 2013; Kostopoulos et al., 2013; Kim et al., 2017). Research provides evidence to support the idea that companies with greater capacity to learn stand a better chance of sensing changes and trends in the market place (Tippins and Sohi, 2003) and that they are more able than competitors to adapt to them (Li and Huang, 2013). Organizational learning requires individual learning and group learning. Group learning occurs when employees in a group share their knowledge with each other. This study focuses on group learning for several reasons. First, for organizational learning to occur it is essential that employees share their knowledge with the other members of their team (Chan et al., 2003; Kostopoulos et al., 2013). Second, because teamwork is considered an internal organizational structure that helps companies to gain in adaptability and flexibility (Woerkom, 2009; Bresman and Zellmer-Bruhn, 2013). Finally, because there are only a few studies that focus on group learning (Lee et al., 2013), its effect on company results and its determinants. The purpose of this doctoral thesis is to analyze the effect of group learning, both exploratory and exploitative, on team performance, and to examine the role of organizational culture as an antecedent of group learning. In addition, this study analyzes whether team cohesion mediates that relationship. After reviewing previous literature on the topic, this thesis proposes some hypotheses, which are contrasted using a sample composed of 163 bank offices belonging to some Spanish financial entities. Given the average number of employees offices have, each one is considered a work team. To measure the variables included in the hypotheses, scales previously used in the literature were used. The methodology used to contrast the hypotheses has been the modeling of structural equations with PLS-SEM. The main conclusions derived from the findings are the following ones. First, evidence has been found that group learning is positively related to higher team performance in the analyzed sector, but only in the case of explorative learning. Second, the results show that adopting an organizational learning culture is positively associated with group learning, both explorative and exploitative group learning, with team cohesion, and with team performance. Finally, this investigation allows us to identify some mediating effects between the variables included in the research model. In particularly, , it was found that explorative group learning partially mediates the relationship between organizational culture and team performance, and that group cohesion partially mediates the relationship between culture and explorative group learning. These results have implications for work team management in the banking sector.