A dynamic perspective on team psychological safety
On Friday 16 June 2023 Bård Fyhn will hold a trial lecture on a prescribed topic and defend his thesis for the PhD degree at NHH.
Prescribed topic for the trial lecture:
How can small group research be used in the designing of sustainable organizations?
Trial lecture:
Aud N, NHH, 10:15. STREAMING
Title of the thesis:
«Safe today, tomorrow, and together: A dynamic perspective on team psychological safety»
There is an increasing focus in many organizations on building psychologically safe teams. Team psychological safety describes a climate in which team members are not afraid to ask questions, are comfortable sharing ideas, and can safely admit mistakes. A large body of research supports the importance of team psychological safety for team learning, innovation, and effective teamwork.
However, much of the research has not considered the dynamics of team psychological safety, such as how perceptions of psychological safety may change over time and differ between members of the same team. This dissertation makes several important contributions to practitioners and the research field through three articles.
Article 1 provides a comprehensive overview of the temporal dynamics of team emergent states—a common term for attitudes, feelings, and perceptions among team members that describe a team’s climate (for example cohesion and psychological safety). This literature review shows that the development of team emergent states follows no universal pattern. Thus, a static view on how cohesive a team is may be misleading.
Article 2 reveals how temporally dynamic team psychological safety may indeed be and how its emergence and development relate to the practices of the team. Since team psychological safety may both wax and wane, time itself is neither sufficient nor necessarily positive. Instead, team psychological safety reveals itself as a perishable good that requires attention over time.
Article 3 shows that different perceptions of psychological safety has impact on how management teams perform. The positive relationship between psychological safety and team performance becomes stronger the more the team members agree that the management team is safe. However, sharedness is not necessarily beneficial. In particular, when psychological safety is low, a safe team member among the unsafe may positively impact team performance.
Defense:
Aud N, NHH, 12:15 / STREAMING
Members of the evaluation committee:
Professor Marcus Selart (leader of the committee), Department of Strategy and Management, NHH
Professor Zhike Lei, IMD Business School (Switzerland)
Professor Stefan Tengblad, School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg
Supervisors:
Professor Vidar Schei (main supervisor), Department of Strategy and Management, NHH
Associate Professor Therese Sverdrup, Department of Strategy and Management, NHH
Associate Professor Henning Bang, Psykologisk institutt ved UIO.
The trial lecture and thesis defense will be open to the public and will be streamed.