ABSTRACT
Introduction Military organizations are systems designed to cope with a high degree of uncertainty (van Creveld 1985). They have to operate in very dynamic and high risk environments where a large part of the information is ambiguous, imperfect or false (Marais et al. 2004). Furthermore, they are characterized by interactive complexity and tight coupling of organizational activities. Interactive complexity refers to the irreversibility of processes and multiple, non-linear feedback loops. Tightly coupled organizations have little slack; actions in one part of the systems directly influence other parts of the organization (Edmondson 2004; Carroll et al. 2003). Organizing and training for these high risk and dangerous environments and staying prepared is a complex challenge for any military organization. Literature on high reliability organizations (HROs) emphasizes the creation of a ‘culture of reliability’ within the operating organizational unit. Organizational learning plays an important role in the creation of this ‘culture of reliability’ and vice versa. According to DiBella et al. (1996), the success of HROs is, to a large extent, dependent on their organizational learning capability, which refers to the organization’s capacity to maintain and improve performance based on experience. However, military HROs cannot afford just learning from trial and error as high risk situations are often unique and may threaten human lives. Military HROs, therefore, often use imagination, vicarious experiences, stories, simulations, and other symbolic representations of high risk situations (Marais et al. 2004). In this chapter we focus on the processes of how common representations are developed with the aid of outsiders. More specifically, we ask to what extent their interventions comply with current insights on team learning and which interventions contribute to the success of team learning. We concentrate on a team-level perspective on organizational learning in military HROs. The teamlevel perspective emphasizes the link between individual and organizational learning. However, it is a widely accepted insight that not all teams are prone to support organizational learning. This observation culminates in the statement that team learning should be considered a phenomenon that is ‘local’ (focused
on specific organizational tasks), interpersonal (influenced by individuals’ perceptions of the social climate), and variegated (non-uniform in both learning process and learning goals) (Edmondson 2002). We define a team as consisting of people who are mutually dependent on each other for achieving a shared goal. A team is mostly formed by managerial intervention. Team composition depends on the requirements put by the task. Different from a group, a team does not necessarily share common norms and affective cohesion. Team learning stresses the integration between learning and working (Argote et al. 2001; Lipshitz et al. 2002). A team therefore should be analyzed in its organizational context taking into account the variegated nature of team learning (Edmondson 2002).
