The Dynamics of Team Learning: Harmony and Rhythm in Teamwork Arrangements for Innovation

Harvey et al · Team Learning · Administrative Science Quarterly · 2023 · Open access

An extensive field study followed by a classroom study examining how different team learning behaviours combine over time. Drawing on music theory, the paper develops the concepts of harmony, dissonance, and rhythm in learning dynamics: reflexive learning serves as the 'tonic' behaviour essential for initiating and concluding innovation projects; combining exploration and exploitation within a single episode produces dissonance and negative effects; separating them across episodes in an exploitation-exploration-exploitation sequence produces positive performance effects. One of the most theoretically novel contributions to the team learning literature, showing that the question is not which behaviours to use but how to sequence them.

Harvey, J.F., Cromwell, J.R., Johnson, K.J. and Edmondson, A.C. (2023) 'The dynamics of team learning: Harmony and rhythm in teamwork arrangements for innovation', Administrative Science Quarterly, 68(3), pp. 601–647.

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