Team Exploratory and Exploitative Learning: Psychological Safety, Task Conflict, and Team Performance

This study conceptualized exploratory and exploitative learning as distinct team-level activities, constructed measures of them, and examined their relationships with psychological safety, task conflict, and team performance. Structural equation analysis in a sample of 142 innovation project teams indicated that psychological safety was linearly and nonlinearly related to team exploitative and exploratory learning, respectively; whereas task conflict positively moderated the relationship between psychological safety and exploitative learning. Furthermore, exploratory and exploitative learning were additively related to team performance, as rated by team managers, and mediated its relationship with psychological safety. The findings contribute to understanding how and under what conditions organizational teams engage in exploratory and exploitative learning to maximize their performance.