| Errors represent a pervasive phenomenon in routine operations of all organizations and nearly every learning process. The research on the processes through which errors are identified and learned from in work teams, however, has significantly lagged behind interest in the phenomena of errors. This dissertation takes a first step toward developing and testing a framework of error identification in work teams. Essentially, I argue that a set of structural, contextual, psychological and cognitive factors will influence: (a) the likelihood that team members are motivated to monitor each other in an effort to identify errors, and (b) the degree to which individual team members identify other team members' errors when motivated to do so.;Two experiments examined how structural (intrateam interdependence), contextual (risk of potential errors and efforts required for error identification), and psychological and cognitive factors (goal commitment, error vigilance, defensive pessimism and cognitive trust) independently and collectively impact error identification in teams. In Study 1, I found that team members with higher levels of commitment to team goals and error vigilance demonstrated greater motivation to monitor and identified more errors than those with lower levels of commitment and error vigilance. Yet high levels of cognitive trust, counterintuitively, discounted team members' motivation to monitor, especially when they were highly committed to team goals but had low levels of error vigilance. Mediation analyses also revealed the important role of motivation to monitor in error identification. In Study 2, consistent with Study 1, I found that high levels of cognitive trust resulted in less motivation to monitor, which, in turn, reduced error identification actions. This was especially true when error identification required high levels of effort. Taken together, the findings in this dissertation highlight that structural, contextual, and psychological and cognitive factors are essential to error identification. |
