The Orientation-to-Behavior Model

Harvey et al. (2019) examined how a team’s orientation toward learning translates into actual learning behaviors, and what mediates and moderates that translation.

Team Learning Orientation is the team’s collective proactivity in seeking, sharing, and integrating knowledge; its valuing of learning as a capability; its openness to experimentation and feedback. This is the motivational precondition — a team that doesn’t value learning won’t enact learning behaviors even when conditions are favorable.

Psychological Safety (Mediator) — Learning orientation does not directly produce learning behaviors. It operates through psychological safety: a team that values learning but lacks psychological safety will suppress the very behaviors its orientation calls for. Edmondson (1999; 2019) established that psychological safety is when “team members are able to be candid with one another” — not just politely agree, but genuinely frank about problems, failures, and disagreements.

Team Open-mindedness (Moderator) — The moderating condition that strengthens the link from psychological safety to learning behaviors. Open-mindedness — the willingness to consider diverse viewpoints and the cognitive flexibility to process new information — prevents psychological safety from becoming an echo chamber. It is the difference between a team that is safe and generative versus one that is safe but complacent.

The Full Pathway

A team with high learning orientation, high psychological safety, and high open-mindedness produces the richest learning behaviors. Deficits in any one dimension create a specific kind of learning failure: