What sparks team learning? Refining the conceptual understanding of team learning and learning triggers

Abstract

Teams and their capacity to learn are considered key cornerstones of organizational success. Research on team learning has substantially grown in recent years, with studies identifying a myriad of positive outcomes and key antecedents. Despite these advances, empirical research remains fragmented due to persistent conceptual ambiguities. Team learning has been conceptualized in numerous ways, encompassing a wide variety of distinct learning behaviors, with limited integration. Moreover, although antecedents and boundary conditions have been extensively investigated, a unified understanding of how team learning is initiated remains unaddressed. This paper presents a systematic review analyzing 239 empirical studies on team learning to address these issues. We introduce a trigger-based process model examining how learning is initiated and unfolds over time, accounting for the vast diversity of learning conceptualizations, theoretical perspectives, and empirical findings in the field. Based on this model, we identify important opportunities for future research on team learning.