University of Amsterdam
Faculty of Economics and Business
MSc Entrepreneurship
The Significance of Team Adaptation in
Startup Co-Founder Teams:
Examining the role of Team Adaptation in the relationship
between Team Psychological Safety, Team Learning Behaviour
and Team Performance
Rick de Wit
Student Number: 12021075
Supervisor: Dr. Bram Kuijken
Preface
This document is written by Rick de Wit, who declares to take full responsibility for the contents of this document.
I declare that the text and the work presented in this document are original and that no sources other than those mentioned in the text and its references have been used in creating it.
The Faculty of Economics and Business is responsible solely for the supervision of completion of the work, not for the contents.
Index
Abstract ... 1
Introduction ... 2
Theoretical Framework ... 6
Team Psychological Safety ... 6
Team Learning Behaviour ... 7
Team Psychological Safety and Team Learning Behaviour ... 9
Team Adaptation ... 10 Conceptual Model ... 12 Methods ... 13 Research Context ... 13 Data Collection ... 14 Measures ... 15 Adequacy of Measures ... 17 Data Analysis ... 19 Results ... 20 Intercorrelation of Constructs ... 20 Multicollinearity Test ... 21
Results of Regression Analyses ... 22
Significance of Control Variables ... 22
Hypotheses Testing ... 23
Additional Findings ... 26
Discussion... 27
Theoretical & Practical Implications ... 32
Limitations & Future Research ... 33
Conclusion ... 34
Appendix ... 35
1
Abstract
Prior research shows that team psychological safety positively affects team performance, while team learning behaviour mediates this relationship. But, little is known about the way how team psychological safety and team learning behaviour exactly affect team performance. Also, not enough research is done about group constructs like team psychological safety in the setting of startup co-founder teams. This paper aims to fill this gap, by examining the role that team adaptation plays in the relationship between team psychological safety, team learning behaviour and team performance in startup co-founder teams. Based on prior literature, it is hypothesized that team adaptation has a mediating effect on the relationship between team psychological safety and team performance (H1). It is also hypothesized that team adaptation has a mediating effect on the relationship between team learning behaviour and team performance (H2). Information about co-founder teams is generated by conducting surveys about team psychological safety, team learning behaviour, team adaptation and team performance within startup co-founder teams in the Netherlands and Germany. The
information gathered of 56 co-founder teams is used as input for regression analyses. The results show that team adaptation plays a mediating role in the relationship between team learning behaviour and team performance. Also, the results show that team psychological safety does not directly affect team performance in the context of startup co-founder teams. The findings of this paper show that team adaptation can be used to better understand how team learning behaviour affects team performance. Also, this paper illustrates that the effect of team psychological safety on team performance is dependent on the context of a team.
2
Introduction
Research demonstrated that team psychological safety has a positive effect on team performance (Edmondson, 1999; Baer & Frese, 2003). This effect can be both direct (Edmondson, 1999) as well as indirect (Baer & Frese, 2003). Many studies show that psychological safety can play a moderating or mediating role between different constructs and team performance as well (e.g. Ashauer & Macan, 2013; Nembhard & Edmondson, 2006; Walumbwa & Schaubroeck, 2009; Martins et al, 2012).
Edmondson (1999) studied the effects of team psychological safety on team performance, by investigating the mediating role of team learning behaviour between the two constructs. Team learning behaviour is defined as “an ongoing process of reflection and action, characterized by asking questions, seeking feedback, experimenting, reflecting on results and discussing errors or unexpected outcomes” (Edmondson, 1999). She found that team psychological safety enhances team performance and that team learning behaviour is a mediating factor in this relation.
Other papers support the findings of Edmondson (1999). For example, team learning behaviour is also considered by others to enhance team performance (Panayides, 2007). This effect is, just like team psychological safety, both direct and indirect. Although many studies demonstrated the effects of team psychological safety and team learning behaviour on team performance, there is no exact explanation about how these two construct affect team performance, and what might influence these relationships. A better understanding is needed about how team psychological safety and team learning behaviour enhance team performance.
This paper expands the work of Edmondson (1999) about the effects of team psychological safety and team learning behaviour on team performance, by adding the concept of team adaptation. Team adaptation is defined as “a change in team performance, in response to a salient cue or cue stream, that leads to a functional outcome for the entire team. Team adaptation is manifested in the innovation of new or modification of existing structures, capacities, and/or behavioral or cognitive goal-directed actions” (Burke et al, 2006). Some papers imply that team adaptation has a direct positive influence on team performance (Woolley, 2009; Pulakos et al, 2000).
3 Although, existing research suggests that team psychological safety and team learning behaviour play a significant role in the development of team adaptation (Burke et al, 2006; Porter, Webb and Gogus, 2010), there is no research looking into the mediation role of team adaptation. This paper argues that team adaptation will mediate between team psychological safety and team performance. A reason for this, is the suggestion that team psychological safety facilitates the adaptability of teams (Burke et al, 2006). Team adaptation means that work routines could be changed, in order to adapt to new circumstances. Individuals could experience changing work routines as a situation where risks are taken (Parent et al, 2012). When there is a high degree of psychological safety, people tend to help each other more in taking a risk (Edmondson, 2003). At the same time, team adaptation enhances the performance of teams (Woolley, 2009; Pulakos et al, 2000). Therefore, this paper argues and investigates the mediating effect of team adaptation on the relationship between team psychological safety and team performance.
In addition, this paper argues and investigates the mediating effect of team adaptation on the relationship between team learning behaviour and team performance. Porter, Webb and Gogus (2010), suggest that learning teams can adapt better to new situations. Also, team adaptation involves teams learning through reflection (Burke et al, 2006). Team learning helps teams to be informed about changes that have to be made, in order to adapt to new situations. Team learning behaviour would, therefore, increase the adaptability of teams. As team adaptation also directly enhances team performance, it could be interesting to investigate a mediating effect of team adaptation on the relationship between team learning behaviour and team performance. Therefore, this paper contributes to the literature by investigating the role that team adaptation plays in the relationship between team psychological safety, team learning behaviour and team performance.
A second contribution of this paper is that it tests the proposed model, which is based on the work of Edmondson (1999), in a different context. The empirical setting of Edmondson’s (1999) study, and most other studies on the mentioned constructs, are work teams in large companies. This research differs from previous research, as it will be conducted using co-founder teams of startups as the unit of analysis.
4 Startups are rapidly increasing in both number of startup companies and investments in startups (Crunchbase, 2016; Get2Growth, 2014).
As startups are becoming increasingly important in the business world, it is important to test the model of Edmondson (1999) in the setting of startups. Large companies tend to face different challenges, than startups. For instance, startups need to get funding in different ways, compared to large companies. Prior research about startups and founding teams is mainly focussed on antecedents of new venture performance (Klotz et al, 2014). There is not a lot written about constructs like team climate or team psychological safety in new ventures yet. Though, prior research does suggest that co-founder teams have a unique context. co-founder teams are still shaping a culture (Staw, 1991), as few social norms are established in their venture (Klotz et al, 2014). Also, co-founder teams tend to have more managerial discretion than leaders (Hambrick & Abrahamson, 1995), as there are “few substitutes and blockers of leadership” (Ensley, Hmieleski, & Pearce, 2006). As startups are becoming increasingly important in the business world, it is important to test the model of Edmondson (1999) in the setting of startups.
As the contexts of startups and big manufacturing companies are significantly different (Klotz et al, 2014) and the construct like team psychological safety have not been investigated in the context of startups yet, new insights can be developed by testing the relationship between team psychological safety, team learning behaviour, team adaptation and team performance in this context.
Based on current literature and the gaps in the literature, the main research question of this paper is:
How does team adaptation play a role in the relation between team psychological safety, team learning behaviour and team performance in the context of startup co-founder teams?
The answer of this research question could provide very interesting insights for both theory and practice.
As already mentioned, there is a lot written about team psychological safety, team learning behaviour and team performance.
5 However, this paper differs significantly from the existing literature. The biggest difference is that this paper includes the variable of team adaptation, which has not been done before in research about the relationship between team psychological safety, team learning behaviour and team performance. Researching this variable could lead to significantly new insights about team psychological safety, team learning behaviour and the way they affect team performance.
This paper could also contribute a lot in the practical sense. The amount of startups is increasing, just like the amount of money that is invested in startups. For example, globally the investments done by Venture Capitalists grew 19% in 2016 (Crunchbase global innovation investment report 2016) and it is believed that there are hundreds of millions of startups worldwide (Get2Growth, 2014).
As startups increase rapidly in numbers it is important to conduct research in the context of a startup as well. Startup teams are already a hot topic for many studies.
The findings of this paper could provide startup co-founder teams with a reason to focus more on team adaptation or team learning behaviour, in order perform better as a co-founder team. Also, investors could use the findings of this paper in order to better assess the startup teams they want to invest in. The findings could indicate that certain variables are of great importance for the (future) performance of a startup, such as team learning behaviour. As a result, the presence of a high degree of team learning behaviour in a startup co-founder team, could be used as a requirement for an investor to invest in a particular startup.
This paper consists of four parts. First, the theoretical framework is discussed. In this part, the main constructs and theories are explained. Also, the hypotheses will be introduced. Subsequently, the method section, in which the research design, the empirical context and data collection are described. This is followed by the results. The paper rounds off with a discussion and conclusion.
6
Theoretical framework
Team Psychological Safety
Psychological safety was discussed for the first time by Schein & Bennis (1965), who claimed that psychological safety is needed to make individuals feel safe working in a team and open for change. Psychological safety is experienced by individuals, but different studies indicate that the openness for risks varies the most between teams (Edmondson, 2002, 2003). This finding suggests that psychological safety is actually a group-level phenomenon.
Previous research proposed different definitions of team psychological safety. For instance, Kahn (1990) described psychological safety as “feeling able to show and employ one's self without fear of negative consequences to self-image, status, or career.” Edmondson (1999) describes psychological safety as: “The belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking”. As Edmondson (1999) is the foundation of this article, her interpretation of team psychological safety is used.
Psychological safety is often linked to trust. Although trust is important for creating psychological safety, it is just a part of it (Edmondson, 1999).
Many times, team psychological safety is even mistaken for trust, though, there is a clear distinction between both constructs. “Trust is the expectation that others' future actions will be favourable to one's interests; psychological safety refers to a climate in which people are comfortable being (and expressing) themselves” (Edmondson, 2003).
Edmondson (2003) also identified antecedents of team psychological safety. She found that supportive leader behaviour, informal group dynamics, the use of a ‘practice field environment’, a supportive context, trust and respect all enhance the degree of psychological safety in a team. Brown and Leigh (1996) found three different dimensions that could indicate whether there is a high or low degree of psychological safety within teams. Working on these dimensions would result in a higher degree of psychological safety. These three dimensions are:
1. Management. If employees feel that they have flexible and supportive leaders, it could be an indication of a high degree of team psychological safety. Also, having control over their own work and work methods are an indication of a high degree of team psychological
7 safety.
2. Clarity. If organizational roles and norms are clear to every actor involved, there is a higher degree of team psychological safety.
3. Self-expression. When employees have the ability and feel safe to express their real opinions in their work roles, this is also a sign of a high degree of team psychological safety.
Team psychological safety appears to be crucial in enhancing team performance. Findings indicate that psychological safety has a direct positive effect on team performance (Edmondson, 1999; Tucker et al, 2007; Baer & Frese, 2003; Faraj & Yan, 2009).
Psychological safety also has an indirect positive effect on team performance (e.g.
Chandrasekaran & Mishra, 2012). For example, psychological safety enhances engagement of employees (Nembhard & Edmondson, 2006), job involvement (Brown & Leigh, 1996) and learning behavior (Edmondson, 1999, 2003; Ashauer & Macan, 2013), which are all constructs that enhance team performance.
Prior research also suggests that team psychological safety is an important
mediating or moderating variable for a variety of relevant constructs in organizations (e.g. Martin et al, 2012; Nembhard & Edmondson, 2006; Walumbwa & Schaubroeck, 2009; Ashauer & Macan, 2013; Baer & Frese, 2003; Tu, Lu, Choi & Guo, 2018; Liu, Liao, & Wei, 2015). For example, it is implied that team psychological safety moderates the relation between expertise diversity within teams and team performance (Martin et al, 2012). Other studies found that it mediates between leader inclusiveness and employee engagement (Nembhard & Edmondson, 2006) and between ethical leadership and employee voice behaviour (Walumbwa & Schaubroeck, 2009).
Team Learning Behaviour
In this paper team learning behaviour is defined as “an ongoing process of reflection and action, characterized by asking questions, seeking feedback, experimenting, reflecting on results and discussing errors or unexpected outcomes” (Edmondson, 1999).
However, there are more definitions of team learning behaviour.
Argote (2011) defines team learning as collecting, combining, creating and sharing of knowledge within a team. According to Mohammed & Dumville (2001), learning in teams
8 is merely about shaping and modifying shared mental models within teams.
But, Mohammed & Dumville (2001) also recognize the description of Edmondson (1999) as the right interpretation of team learning behaviour. Therefore, this paper will use the explanation of Edmondson (1999) as the description of team learning behaviour.
As Hirst, Knippenberg & Zhou (2009) argued, team learning behaviour is not about a shared climate or ambition, but merely about the process of discussing and solving problems within a team.
Learning also exists in the context of an organization, though, team learning behaviour is different from organizational learning. According to Mohammed & Dumville (2001), the difference between the two kinds of learning is visible in prior literature. Literature about team learning behaviour focuses more on group processes such as internal communication of teams, while organizational learning literature focuses more on learning processes in the whole organization.
Argote (2011) investigated the process of team learning behaviour. She splits the organization’s context in a latent context and an active learning context. The actors of an organization actually take action in order to learn in the active context. Through interaction with the environment of an organization, actors learn from the environment and influence the environment at the same time.
There are various antecedents of team learning behaviour. Leadership and trust are considered to have a great impact on the knowledge sharing in teams (Lee, Gillespie, Mann, & Wearing, 2010), which is an important aspect of team learning behaviour
(Argote, 1999). Next to that, organizational design is crucial as well. According to Gibson & Vermeulen (2003) “performance management by an external leader, team
empowerment, and the availability of knowledge management systems” are also relevant factors that could influence the amount of team learning behaviour in an organization. The characteristics of individuals involved and having strong demographic subgroups within teams also influences the amount of learning behaviour in a team. (Pulakos et al, 2000; Gibson & Vermeulen, 2003).
9 Just like team psychological safety, team learning behaviour is believed to have a positive influence on team performance (Panayides, 2007; Edmondson, 1999; Bresman, 2010; Gibson & Vermeulen, 2003; van Woerkom & Van Engen, 2009). According to Bresman (2010), team learning behaviour increases the willingness and ability of team members to develop and implement new activities, which will enhance team performance.
Team Psychological Safety and Team Learning Behaviour
According to prior literature, psychological safety is also an antecedent of team learning behaviour (e.g. Cannon & Edmondson, 2001; Post, 2012; Kostopoulos & Bozionelos, 2011). Edmondson (1999) already suggested that psychological safety increases the level of learning behaviour in teams. More articles support the same claim (e.g.; Cannon & Edmondson, 2001; Post, 2012; Carmeli & Gittell, 2009). Other articles imply that psychological safety is related to “higher levels of learning behaviours of individuals” (Carmeli, Brueller & Dutton, 2008) and “team exploitative and exploratory learning” (Kostopoulos & Bozionelos, 2011).
Edmondson (1999) even implied the mediating effect of team learning behaviour between team psychological safety and team performance. A reasoning behind this relation between the two constructs, is that psychological safety enables team members to speak up and ask questions. In essence, this means that team members are not being punished for the interpersonal risks that they take (Edmondson, 1999). This helps the team to capture the complexity of different issues (Post, 2012) and learn from shared experiences. The lessons learned helps teams to perform better. Therefore, team learning behaviour would mediate the relationship between team psychological safety and team performance.
Prior research about this relation is conducted in the context of organizational work teams (e.g. Edmondson, 1999; Cannon & Edmondson, 2001 ) and innovation teams (e.g. Post, 2012; Kostopoulos & Bozionelos, 2011). In all the instances, teams were part of larger companies or corporates.
10
Team Adaptation
Team adaptation is defined in many different ways. For example, team adaptation is defined as “a metamorphic shift in the team network in the short term to deal with the performance demands of a nonroutine task.” (Kozlowski, Gully, Nason, & Smith, 1999). The definition of LePine (2003) is a bit more generic: “Reactive and nonscripted adjustments to a team’s system of member roles that contribute to team effectiveness”. This paper will use the description of Burke et al (2006): “a change in team performance, in response to a salient cue or cue stream, that leads to a functional outcome for the entire team”, because this definition has been used regularly in other articles about team adaptation, teamwork and team performance (e.g. Hülsheger, Anderson & Salgado, 2009; DeChurch & Mesmer-Magnus, 2010; Call et al, 2015; Baard, Rench & Kozlowski, 2014)
According to previous research, adaptive teams can have different skills. Those skills include quick decision-making (Waller, 1999; Pulakos et al, 2000; Christian et al, 2017), being prepared for unexpected changes (Burke et al, 2006), looking for cues of big changes in the environment (Randall, Resick, & DeChurch, 2011) , modifying work routines and many more different skills (Han & Williams, 2008).
Team adaptation is specifically important for the performance and development of startups. As startup teams need to adapt themselves repeatedly to the new stages of the entrepreneurial process (Klotz et al, 2014), it is of great importance for those teams to have a high level of team adaptation. Chandler, Honig & Wiklund (2005) argued that moving through the various growth stages causes problems for new ventures that forces them to change. In order to solve those problems, new venture teams will need new skills and priorities, which means that they have to adapt themselves. Having a high level of team adaptation will, in this case, help startup co-founder teams to perform better in general. Also, team adaptation will help to cope with the changes that need to be made, in order to move through the various growth stages. Shrader & Siegel (2007) also state that workers with the ability to effectively adapt to changes in the external environment, are “highly-useful for high-tech, entrepreneurial firms”. Therefore, this paper argues that team adaptation is of great importance for startup teams.
11 Team adaptation is believed to have a positive influence on team performance (LePine 2005; Pulakos et al. 2000; Woolley, 2009). One of the reasons for this, is that teams who can adapt to a certain environment, will be better at fulfilling demand and facing challenges. For instance, LePine (2003) looked at how team adaptation, and specifically role adaptation, affects postchange performance. She found that team adaptation is positively correlated with postchange performance.
Some literature (e.g. Burke et al, 2006; Kogut & Zander, 1993) implies that team psychological safety and team learning behaviour could increase and facilitate team adaptation. As team adaptation increases team performance as well, a mediating effect of team adaptation would be logical.
Although there is not a lot of literature about the influence of team psychological safety on team adaptation, Burke et al (2006) already implied that psychological safety is influencing the level of team adaptation in work teams. They proposed a model called the “adaptive cycle”. According to their research, psychological safety is positively related with several phases of the adaptive cycle, such as plan formulation and plan execution. Team psychological safety would promote interpersonal risk taking.
This enables team members to speak up and articulate their perspective on ideas and plans of others. Also, team psychological safety increases the acceptance of mutual performance monitoring. This enables team members to provide each other with feedback about their performance, which helps in the adaptation process. When team members can give each other feedback on the way they adapt to new situations and provide each other with ideas about how to adapt to new situations, a team can adapt more effective and faster (Burke et al, 2006) Team psychological safety thus enables team members to speak up and actually provide each other with feedback and ideas. Therefore, psychological safety would increase the quality of team adaptation.
Another reason why team psychological safety enhances team adaptation is provided by Uhl-Bien & Arena (2018). They argue that for team adaptation to work effectively, enabling leadership is needed. Psychological safety would play an important role in enabling leadership. Enabling leadership means that leaders provide the team members with space and enable them to adapt to new situations in their own way. When team members are enabled to act in their own way, conflict between members could arise.
12 A climate where there is trust between members, such as psychological safety, is crucial in order to let this work (Uhl-Bien & Arena, 2018). Therefore, psychological safety would facilitate teams to adapt easier.
As team psychological safety enhances team adaptation in multiple ways and both team psychological safety and team adaptation also directly increase team performance, the first hypothesis is formed:
H1: Team adaptation mediates the relationship between team psychological safety and team performance
In their article, Burke, Stagl, Salas et al (2006) argue that team learning through reflection is a part of team adaptation. Also, Porter, Webb and Gogus (2010) implied that a learning orientation of teams has a positive effect on team adaptability.
Kogut and Zander (1993) state that an increase in learning activities helps teams adapting new practices. The reasoning behind this relation, is that learning behaviour increases the amount of knowledge about a certain environment or change. As teams know more about the changed factors, through learning, it would be easier to adapt properly to the new situation. Therefore, team learning behaviour would increase the adaptation abilities of teams. Prior literature implies that team learning and team adaptation also directly enhance team
performance (e.g. Gibson & Vermeulen, 2003; van Woerkom & Van Engen, 2009; LePine, 2005; Woolley, 2009). Therefore, the second hypothesis is:
H2: Team adaptation mediates the relationship between team learning behaviour and team performance.
Conceptual Model
This paper argues for the situation of figure 1 in startup co-founder teams. Figure 1 is constructed by combining the hypotheses with the relationships that prior literature already implies.
13
Figure 1
Methods
Research Context
This paper is specifically focussed on co-founder teams of startups. As mentioned before, the number of startups is increasing rapidly. Also the investments made in startups are growing in number and sizes (Crunchbase, 2016; Get2Growth, 2014).
The growing importance of startups in the business world makes this context interesting for conducting research.
The startups that are included in the sample, are from the Netherlands or Germany. The reason for this, is the thriving startup ecosystem in both countries. For example, the startup ecosystem in the Netherlands is the 6th biggest of Europe and hosts Europe’s biggest business incubators, Rockstart and Startupbootcamp (Tech.co, 2016; Forbes, 2015). A lot of the startups (around 80%) in the sample are based in Amsterdam, Delft or Berlin. Amsterdam is considered a great place for startups. It is in the top five of many rankings regarding the best cities for startups in Europe. Berlin is in the top ten of the same rankings (EU-Startups, 2017; Digital City Index, 2016.). Delft is home to incubator Yes!Delft, which is the second best incubator of the world in the category “Affiliated with University” (Yes!Delft, 2018).
14
Data Collection
This study investigates co-founder teams of startups. Co-founders are individuals who decided to start the business and typically own a percentage of the shares of the business. In general, co-founders are responsible for most of the important decision making and
operations in startups. They have to decide how the startup is going to survive and develop itself. Next to that, co-founder teams also need to learn new skills quickly, in order to let their venture survive (Ensley, Pearson, & Amason, 2002). Therefore, the performance of a co-founder team is crucial for the performance of a startup.
Because of the great influence of the co-founder team on the performance of a startup, it is more interesting to conduct research on co-founder teams, than on the employees of startups.
Co-founder teams are found via startup incubators and hubs, such as Yes!Delft and TQ Amsterdam. The co-founder teams were contacted by using different methods. First, email-addresses that were found on the website of startups were used to make initial contact and inviting co-founders to fill in a survey. LinkedIn was also used to contact co-founders. By searching for ‘co-founder’ at LinkedIn, the LinkedIn accounts of people that founded a startup were generated. Messages were sent to those co-founders, inviting them to fill in a survey. Cold calling was the third method that was used. The phone numbers were found on the website of the startup or the website of business incubators.
Eventually, 56 useful co-founder team responses were generated. The team responses consists of responses of two co-founders per co-founder team. As approximately 520 startups are contacted, this means a response rate of 10,77%.
Noteworthy is the fact that almost 90% of the participants are male, which means that there is not a real balance in gender in the sample. Also, a lot of participants are under 30 years old (over 63%), which is 10 years younger, than average for co-founders of a startup
(Forbes, 2015). Next to that, a great part of the sample has, at least, a Bachelor degree (over 88%), which indicates that a majority of the participants has been studying on a high level. Over 58% did not have founder experience yet. Just a small percentage (7,1% )
co-founded at least 3 startups before founding their current startup. As a result, the sample seems to be inexperienced in terms of (co-)founding startups.
15
Measures
Team Psychological Safety
Scales of Edmondson (1999) are used for measuring team psychological safety. During her research, she developed the scales based on qualitative research methods. Many other articles use her scales (e.g. Kostopoulos & Bozionelos, 2011; Johnson & Avolio, 2018; Deng et al, 2017). The scales contain different statements, such as ‘When someone makes a mistake in this team, it is often held against him or her’ and ‘It is completely safe to take a risk on this team.’ Participants can rate the statements by using a 7-point Likert scale, varying from ‘Strongly Agree’ (1) to ‘Strongly Disagree’ (7).
Team Learning Behaviour
Scales of Edmondson (1999) are used for team learning behaviour as well. As her paper is the foundation of this paper, her scales for team learning behaviour are used. Some examples of items are: ‘This team tends to handle differences of opinion privately or off-line, rather than addressing them directly as a group’, and ‘We invite people from outside the team to present information or have discussions with us’
The items could be rated, using a 7-point Likert scale, varying from ‘Strongly Agree’ (1) to ‘Strongly Disagree’ (7).
Team Adaptation
The scale used in this study for team adaptation is adapted from the work of Han & Williams (2008) on team adaptation. Han & Williams (2008) argue that team adaptation is a construct with many different dimensions, their article tries to capture all of them. The scales
developed by Han & Williams (2008) are very divers. Based on an extensive literature review, I concluded to use only the following four out of the fourteen items, because these four items were the main returning themes in the leading articles about team adaptation.
The first item is ‘To deal with unexpected things, this team knows central roles and critical paths.’ The main literature about team adaptation is focussing a lot on shared mental models (e.g. Christian, Christian, Pearsall & Long, 2017). Shared mental models are of great importance for team adaptation: “In the absence of shared mental models adaptive team performance is not possible, because members do not have compatible views of equipment, tasks, and team member roles and responsibilities, which allow members to adapt
16 proactively” (Burke et al, 2006). Also, knowing exactly what to do and “who knows what” increases the adaptive performance of a team (Majchrzak et al., 2007). This item by Han & Williams (2008) captures the essence of mental models: teams need to know what to do and who can do it, when unexpected things happen.
The second item that is chosen is: ‘The decision making in an emergency is quickly made in this team.’ Waller (1999), Pulakos, Arad, Donovan & Plamondon (2000) and Christian, Christian, Pearsall & Long (2017) all write about the essence of fast decision making. ‘Thinking on their feet’ is helping the performance of teams in adaptive environments.
The third item is ‘This team creates several scenarios for different situations when the switch is needed.’ Scenario-based training (SBT) is a great tool to enhance team adaptation and create a learning environment (Burke et al, 2006). When teams create different scenarios, it will be helping their adaptive performance. Therefore, this item is also chosen.
The fourth item is ‘This team often searches for indicators that signify a major
change’. Being able to predict the actions of the environment will enhance team performance (Rico et al, 2008). Also, the frequency and speed of which a team can identify changes in the environment, are positively related with team adaptability and helps teams to make more effective decisions (Waller, 1999; Randall, Resick, & DeChurch, 2011).
The scales are rated using a 7-point Likert scale. Possible answers varied from Strongly Agree’ (1) to ‘Strongly disagree’ (7).
Team Performance
The scales of Aube & Rousseau (2005) are chosen to measure team performance. Again, the items could be rated using a 7-point Likert scale. The possible answers vary from “Strongly Agree’ (1) to ‘Strongly disagree’ (7). The scales of Aube & Rousseau (2005) are focussed on the effectivity and productivity of a team that is perceived by the co-founders.
The scales of include items like “The members of this team produce quality work” and “The members of this team attain their assigned performance goals”.
Control Variables
In order to reduce the effect of confounding variables on the hypothesized model, two control variables that could influence team performance are included into the regression analyses. Those variables are Funding and Founder experience.
17 Existing studies show that different forms of funding increase performance of
startups. For example, funding of angel investors helps achieving positive performance milestones (e.g. Shane & Stuart, 2002; Kerr, Lerner & Schoar, 2011). Government funding enhances the functioning and returns of research ventures (Benfratello & Sembenelli, 2001). And an investment of a VC has a positive association with startup’s performance and growth (e.g. Baum & Silverman, 2004; Davila, Foster & Gupta, 2003).
Founding experience makes it easier for co-founders to do well and help their startups to survive (Delmar & Shane, 2006). For instance, startups with experienced founders have more chance of creating breakthrough innovations (Tzabbar & Margolis, 2017) and are more likely to successfully take on high-risk opportunities (Dencker & Gruber, 2015). Founding experience also enhances leadership skills of founders (McCall, 2004).
Both the control variables are used as dummy variables in the analyses. The reason for this, is that current literature only proved that funding of a startup or founder experience has impact on the performance of a startup. Significant differences between amounts of funding or experience are not yet proven.
Adequacy of Measures
In order to test whether the chosen scales are reliable and valid, different analyses were performed. All the analyses were performed, using SPSS of IBM.
I used Cronbach’s Alpha, Composite Reliabilities and Intraclass Correlations to assess the quality of the chosen scales.
Cronbach’s Alpha
Cronbach’s Alpha is a frequently used test for assessing internal consistency of scales. Table 1 shows the different Cronbach Alpha’s of the constructs. All constructs meet the minimal requirement of a Cronbach Alpha of 0.6 of Churchill (1979).
Though, for Team Psychological Safety and Team Adaptation, the Cronbach Alpha is rather low (0.615 and 0.601). According to Hulland (1999), the cause of a low Cronbach Alpha can be the multidimensionality of a construct. As Cronbach’s Alpha assumes unidimensionality of constructs (Cortina, 1993), it can be problematic to use this test for multidimensional constructs.
It is clear that Team Adaptation, Team Psychological Safety and Team Learning Behaviour are divers constructs. Therefore, they can have multiple dimensions.
18 This could lead to problems in using Cronbach Alpha to assess the internal consistency of these scales. Therefore, composite reliabilities could be more useful for assessing internal validity, than Cronbach Alpha.
Table 1
Composite Reliabilities
Composite reliability, or McDonalds coefficient, does not assume unidimensionality and can also be used to assess internal consistency of scales (Shook et al, 2004). Table 1 also shows the composite reliabilities of the constructs. With composite reliabilities varying from 0.77 to 0.85, all constructs reach the threshold of 0.7 as an acceptable level for composite reliabilities (Shook et al, 2004).
Intraclass Correlations
Edmondson (1999) uses Intraclass Correlations (ICC) to prove that the group-level variables, based on individual responses, are sound to use. Also, according to Edmondson & McManus (2007) it is common for “Mature Theory Studies” to use ICC as a “team agreement test”. An ICC measures to what extent team members give the similar ratings and how much those ratings differ from other teams. The ICC should be significantly greater than zero, in order to prove that the group-level variable is an appropriate measurement tool (Edmondson, 1999). Table 2 shows that all ICC coefficients are significant (p< 0.001). It also shows that the smallest ICC coefficient is 0.483, which is significantly greater than zero.
19
Table 2
As all the scales pass the minimal requirements of Cronbach Alpha, Composite Reliability and ICC, they seem to be reliable and valid to use. Therefore, the adequacy of the measures is proven.
Data Analysis
Individual responses of the survey were collected and transformed into a SPSS file. From there, the responses were aggregated into group responses. Using the ‘Aggregate’ function, mean scores were calculated per question on behalf of every startup. The mean scores of the questions were then processed into a score per group-level construct, such as Team
Psychological Safety. The end scores per startup per construct were used as input for the regression models. Using the theory and templates of Hayes (2017), the statistical diagram is constructed (figure 2).
20 Hayes developed an extension for SPSS Statistics, which can be used to analyse the statistical diagrams he created. This extension, called PROCESS 3.0, is used in this paper to perform several regression analyses of the statistical diagram. To do this, I used model 6 of Hayes (2017) and his PROCESS macro in SPSS Statistics.
As both the hypotheses claim a mediating effect of team adaptation, it is important to use valid criteria of a mediation effect. A mediation effect, according to Baron & Kenny (1986), has three criteria:
1. The mediator predicts the dependent variable 2. The independent variable predicts the mediator
3. The effect of the independent variable on the dependent variable drops significantly for partial mediation and becomes insignificant when full mediation is entered into the model.
The mediation effects are also tested using the intervals of the PROCESS macro by Hayes. When the confidence interval of the effects of the independent variable, through the mediation variable, on the dependent variable crosses zero, this indicates that there is no clear mediation effect.
Results
IntercorrelationsFirst, intercorrelations between constructs were calculated. The results are visible in table 3. There are multiple significant correlations between the relevant variables.
The first significant correlation is between team psychological safety and team learning behaviour (r =0,387, p <0,01). At the same time, team learning behaviour is significantly correlated with team adaptation (r = 0,361, p<0,01) and team performance (r =0,320,
p<0.05). The last significant correlation is between team adaptation and team performance
(r =0,404, p<0.01). The significant correlations already suggest that team adaptation could be an important variable in this research.
21
Table 3
Multicollinearity Test
Variance Inflation Factors (VIFs) were used to test for multicollinearity between the independent variables, which can be problematic for regression analysis. The VIF values are reported in table 4. The VIF values vary from 1,176 to 1,334. VIF values smaller than 10 indicate that there should be no problem with multicollinearity using the corresponding data (Griffith & Harvey, 2001; Dielman, 2001). Therefore, the VIF values show that there is no problematic degree of multicollinearity between the independent variables.
22
Results of Regression Analyses
Using SPSS and the PROCESS extension of Hayes, multiple regression models were computed based on the team-level data. Also, the criteria for mediation of Baron & Kenny (1986) are used.
Significance of Control Variables
First, the significance of the control variables on team performance is tested.
Table 5 shows the results of the different regression models that are computed for testing the statistical significance of the control variables.
Table 5
The results show that both control variables are not significantly predicting values of team performance. Model 1 is constructed, using funding as the only independent variable predicting values of team performance. In this situation, funding does not have a significant impact on team performance (B=0,027, p=0,868).
Model 2 includes founder experience as the only independent variable. Just like funding, it does not have a significant effect on team performance (B=-0,078, p=0,597). Model 3 is constructed using both funding and founder experience as independent variables. Both variables again fail to have a significant effect on team performance (B=0,030, p=0,851 and B=-0,079, p=0,595).
Based on the regression models, the control variables do not seem to have a significant effect on team performance for this sample. But, both control variables are still included in several regression models for hypotheses testing, because of their significant role in team performance according to prior literature.
23
Hypotheses testing
To test H1, which suggests a mediating effect of team adaptation between team
psychological safety and team performance, the criteria for mediation of Baron & Kenny (1986) are used.
According to these criteria, it is important to first look at the relationship between team adaptation and team performance. Table 6 shows the results of different regression models that were performed on team performance.
Table 6
Model 1 is constructed, using team adaptation as the only independent variable and team performance as the dependent variable. Under these circumstances, team adaptation is able to significantly predict values of team performance (B=0,31; p= 0,002).
In Model 2 and 3, team adaptation is not the only independent variable anymore. In Model 2, team psychological safety is also included. In Model 3, team psychological safety, team learning behaviour and team adaptation are included. Team adaptation is significantly predicting values of team performance in both models. (B=0,306, p=0,0038 and B=0,262,
p=0,0176). As team adaptation is significantly predicting values of team performance in
various settings, the first criteria of this mediation effect is met (Baron & Kenny, 1986). The second criteria for mediation (Baron & Kenny, 1986) says that team
psychological safety should be able to significantly predict values of team adaptation. In order to look at this relation, table 7 is constructed.
24 Model 1 and 3 include team psychological safety as the independent variable and team
adaptation as the dependent variable. In Model 1, team psychological safety is the only independent variable involved. Though, the results of this model show that it does not significantly predict values of team adaptation (B=0,080, p=0,609). Model 3 includes team psychological safety together with team learning behaviour as the independent variables. Again, team psychological safety does not significantly predict values of team adaptation (B=-0.0855, p=0,5961). Based on these two regression models, it cannot be said that team psychological safety is able to significantly predict values of team adaptation. Therefore, the second criteria for the mediation effect of team adaptation on the relationship between team psychological safety and team performance is not met. Based on this finding, no support is found for H1.
Table 7
Hypothesis 2 is saying that team adaptation mediates between team learning behaviour and team performance. Again, the criteria of Baron & Kenny (1986) for a mediation effect are used.
It is already shown that team adaptation significantly predicts values of team performance, based on the results in table 6 (models 1,2 and 3). Therefore, the first criteria of the mediation effect is met.
The second criteria says that team learning behaviour should significantly predict values of team adaptation. Table 7 (Model 2 and 3) are used to test this criteria. Model 2 is constructed in a setting where team learning behaviour is the only independent variable, while team adaptation is the dependent variable.
25 In Model 3, team learning behaviour and team psychological safety are both used as the independent variable. In both settings, team learning behaviour is significantly predicting values of team adaptation (B=0,349, p=0,009 and B=0,378, p=0,01). The regression
models indicate that team learning behaviour is able to predict values of team adaptation in different settings. Therefore, the second criteria for the mediation effect of team adaptation on the relationship between team learning behaviour and team performance is met.
In order to meet the last criteria, team learning behaviour should have a significant effect on team performance. Though, this effect should become insignificant when a full mediation of team adaptation is tested. The results are visible in table 8.
Table 8
Model 1 and 2 are constructed in a setting where team learning behaviour is the only independent variable. Team performance is the dependent variable. The results show that team learning behaviour is significantly predicting values of team performance (B=0,253,
p=0,016 and B=0,252, p=0,019).
Model 3 is a regression model where team adaptation also enters the regression.
In this case, the contribution of team learning behaviour becomes insignificant (B=0,162,
p=0,1305) , while the effect of team adaptation stays significant (B=0,259, p=0,018).
This would mean that the third criteria for the mediation effect is also met. Team learning behaviour has a significant impact on team performance. But, when the mediator enters the model, its contribution becomes insignificant.
Therefore, all the criteria for a mediation effect of team adaptation on the relationship between team learning behaviour and team performance are met (Baron & Kenny, 1986). Based on this finding, H2 is supported by the data.
26 This mediation effect can be tested using the effect interval of the PROCESS macro by
Hayes.
Table 9
The interval (0,022; 0,207) in table 9 does not cross zero and both boundaries are positive. This indicates that the mediation effect is significantly positive.
Additional Findings
Next to testing the hypotheses, the regression analyses also provided other interesting insights.
For instance, the results show that team psychological safety is not having a significant impact on team performance. In table 10 (model 1) the results are given. It is clear that team psychological safety does not significantly predict values of team
performance (B=0,155, p=0,203), when it is only independent variable in the regression model. In order to look at the effect of the control variables of team performance, model 2 is constructed. When including control variables, team psychological safety still does not significantly predict values of team performance (B=0,156, p=0,210).
Therefore it cannot be said, based on this data, that team psychological safety is having a significant impact on team performance of co-founder teams.
27 The results do indicate that team psychological safety does have a significant effect on team learning behaviour. This was tested by regressing team psychological safety on team learning behaviour, the regression model is visible in Table 11.
Table 11
Table 11 shows that team psychological safety is significantly predicting values of team learning behaviour (B=0,439, p = 0,003). This finding suggests that team psychological safety is positively correlated with team learning behaviour.
Discussion
The main research goal of this paper is to look into the role that team adaptation plays in the relationship between team psychological safety, team learning behaviour and team performance in the setting of a startup co-founder team. Based on an extensive literature review, two hypotheses are formulated.
The first hypothesis that is formulated said that team adaptation would mediate the relationship between team psychological safety and team performance. The second
hypothesis said that team adaptation would mediate the relationship between team learning behaviour and team performance.
The results indicate that team psychological safety does not directly influence team performance in the context of startup co-founder teams. Also team psychological safety did not significantly affect team adaptation in the regression models. Therefore, team
adaptation cannot mediate between team psychological safety and team performance, based on the results. This means that no support is found for the first hypothesis.
28 These findings differ from earlier studies. Prior literature suggests that team
psychological safety does have a direct positive effect on team performance (e.g. Edmondson, 1999; Baer & Frese, 2003; Faraj & Yan, 2009). According to the results of this paper, team psychological safety only has an indirect effect on team performance in co-founder startup teams. Based on this finding, the model of Edmondson (1999), which also implies that team psychological safety has a direct positive effect on team
performance, does not seem to be applicable in the context of co-founder teams. This deviant finding could be explained by the fact that this paper is written in a different context. The unique context could explain why team psychological safety is not directly correlated with team performance in startup co-founder teams.
The first explanation is that co-founders overoptimistically rate team performance, while there could be a low degree of team psychological safety in their co-founder team. As Klotz et al (2014) explain, startup co-founders can prevent the emergence of team psychological safety. Co-founders have great power over the team (Ensley et al, 2006) and have strong emotional ties to their venture (Gimeno et al, 1997). As co-founders have strong emotional ties to the venture, this could cause co-founders to be intolerant for feedback on the decisions they make for leading the venture. In this case, there is a low degree of team psychological safety (Klotz et al, 2014). According to prior literature, a low degree of team psychological safety should result in a poor team performance. But co-founders of startups could rate team performance very optimistically, which is not uncommon for co-founders to do, due to a certain bias (Certo et al 2001; Busenitz & Barney, 1997). According to Busenitz & Barney (1997), co-founders are overconfident about their venture. Therefore, current literature suggests that co-founders can
simultaneously prevent the emergence of psychological safety and rate team performance overoptimistically. In this case, a low degree of team psychological safety could still result in a good rating for team performance. This could be an explanation of why this paper finds that team psychological safety does not significantly influence team performance. Co-founders could indicate that their venture has a low degree of team psychological safety, because the same co-founders are intolerant for feedback and ideas of others.
Meanwhile, the co-founders can have an overoptimistic view on their team performance, as they are overconfident about their venture (Busenitz & Barney, 1997). The result is an overoptimistic rating for team performance, even when team psychological safety has a low rating.
29 This could be a reason why this paper finds that team psychological safety does not
significantly influence team performance, which is deviant from the findings of prior literature.
Another explanation for this difference is provided by Ensley, Pearson & Amason (2002). This article states that a team climate where open exchange of ideas and speaking up freely are normal, could result into affective conflict. Team psychological safety is comparable with such a climate, as it also promotes speaking up and discussing different ideas. Therefore, team psychological safety could cause affective conflict, which is
negatively correlated with team performance. Ensley, Pearson & Amason (2002) state that effective teams only aim for the positive sides of conflict, while evading the costs of it. This means that team climates can also be focussed too much on speaking up and discussing different perspectives, which could lead to too much conflict between team members. Teams have to manage their open team climate effectively, otherwise the positive outcomes of open team climates can also cause affective conflict, which negatively affects team performance (Ensley, Pearson & Amason, 2002).
Co-founder teams might not be able to effectively ‘manage’ team psychological safety. Several studies (Kahn, 1990; Brown & Leigh, 1996) have suggested that clear norms are needed for effective team psychological safety. Meanwhile, Klotz et al (2014) imply that co-founder teams only have few social norms established. As co-founder teams do not have a lot of social norms yet, team psychological safety might not be managed effectively. This could lead to a situation where co-founder teams cannot evade the costs of team psychological safety, such as affective conflict.
Thus, the absence of social norms in founder teams could lead to a situation where co-founder teams cannot evade the ‘costs’ of a climate where everyone can speak up freely. Because the benefits of team psychological safety are then reduced by the costs, like affective conflict, it does not influence team performance significantly in the setting of co-founder teams.
Another reason why the first hypothesis is not true for co-founder teams, is that team psychological safety does not significantly affect team adaptation.
Meanwhile, prior literature wrote that team psychological safety makes it easier for teams to adapt to new situations. Burke et al (2006) actually stated that psychological safety is part of the ‘adaptive cycle’. The contradicting finding of this paper could also be explained
30 by the unique context of co-founder teams. Ventures are usually founded by teams of
friends, family or former colleagues, which results in an overlap of human and social capital between the different team members (Klotz et al, 2014). Psychological safety is part of ‘the adaptive cycle’, because it allows team members with different perspectives and knowledge to question plans and ideas of others (Burke et al, 2006). If the members of a co-founder team do have a substantial overlap of human capital, this could mean that they would not question each other’s ideas frequently enough. The overlap in human capital could cause the team members to have the same perspectives or ideas. This would explain why the effect of team psychological safety on team adaptation would not be significant. A high degree of team psychological safety would facilitate co-founders to question each other’s ideas and eventually improve the adaptability of the team (Burke et al, 2006). But, due to an overlap of human capital, the co-founders are not capable or willing to question ideas of other team members. The consequence is a situation where team psychological safety does not significantly influence team adaptation.
Although the first hypothesis is not supported, the results do indicate that the second hypothesis is true. Team adaptation mediates the relationship between team learning behaviour and team performance in startup co-founder teams. This is proven by the significant results of the regression analyses and using the criteria for mediation of Baron & Kenny (1986). As the second hypothesis is supported by the regression analyses, the results suggest that the implied positive effect of team learning behaviour on team performance (e.g. Panayides, 2007; Edmondson, 1999; Bresman, 2010; Gibson & Vermeulen, 2003), is also true in the setting of co-founder teams.
Next to that, existing theories about the positive effect of team learning behaviour on team adaptation (Porter, Webb & Gogus, 2010; Kogut & Zander, 1993) also seem to be true for co-founder teams, as the second hypothesis is supported by the results.
The support for the second hypothesis also indicates that the positive effects of team adaptation on team performance, which is already implied by other studies (e.g. LePine 2003, 2005; Pulakos et al. 2000; Woolley, 2009), is also applicable for startup co-founder teams.
Next to the support for the second hypothesis, the result also indicate that the
relation between team psychological safety and team learning behaviour is significant. This confirms existing theories about the positive association between team psychological
31 As the results only support the second hypothesis, the expected conceptual model (figure 1) is not applicable for the context of co-founder teams. The results show a rather different model for the relationship between team psychological safety, team learning behaviour, team adaptation and team performance in co-founder teams, which is visible in figure 3.
Figure 3
The fact that the control variables are not significant in this paper is also different from prior findings. Both funding and founder experience appeared to have no significant impact on team performance in this paper. Meanwhile, several studies (Shane & Stuart, 2002; Kerr, Lerner & Schoar, 2011; Dencker & Gruber, 2015) show that the variables do have impact on team performance of startups. The difference between these studies and this paper could be caused by the subjective scales for team performance that are used in this paper. Prior literature showed that funding and founding experience have a positive impact on a variety of performance measures, such as web traffic performance (Kerr, Lerner & Schoar, 2011) and number of employees. Meanwhile, this paper uses more subjective performance measures, such as perceived productivity of co-founders. This difference can explain why the control variables are not significant. Co-founders might
32 take into account funding of their startup and their prior experience when rating the
productivity and effectivity of their team. This could cause funding and founder experience to have no significant effect on the perceived team performance.
Theoretical and Practical Implications
The findings of this paper can be seen as a contribution to several literature streams. First of all, this paper contributes to the organizational learning literature stream. It suggests that team adaptation is an important mediator in the relationship between team learning behaviour and team performance. This finding provides a more in-depth understanding of how team learning influences team performance and what factors are important in this relationship.
Also, this paper is relevant for the literature regarding team climate and culture. It is one of the few papers which implies that team psychological safety does not directly enhance team performance. This finding could provide researchers with a better understanding of the antecedents of team psychological safety, and when the effect of team psychological safety on team performance is reduced.
Lastly, this paper also contributes to the literature about startup co-founder teams.
According to Klotz et al (2014), there is not yet enough research about constructs like team psychological safety in the context of co-founder teams. Therefore, this paper could be seen as the first attempt to understand the relationship between team psychological safety, team learning behaviour, team adaptation and team performance in the context of
co-founder teams. Further research could elaborate on the findings of this paper.
This paper also holds significance for practitioners. The findings of this paper can be used as a guideline for co-founder teams, in order to identify crucial factors that improve (future) team performance. Specifically, this paper shows, that a focus on team adaptation is crucial to make the effect of team learning behaviour on team performance even bigger. Startup co-founder teams should pay attention to the adaptability of their team, as it can help their performance significantly and make their learning practices even more useful. Another crucial insight is that team psychological safety is still an important factor for team performance, as it positively influences team learning behaviour.
Therefore, co-founder teams should focus on creating a climate where people can speak up freely, in order to learn from different ideas and perspectives. Also, potential investors in
33 startups can use the findings of this paper.
This paper proves that team adaptation is another important factor for team performance of co-founder teams. Therefore, potential investors should, next to team psychological safety and team learning behaviour, also look at the team adaptation of a co-founder team. This paper gives investors a reason to focus more on team adaptation in startup co-founder teams, when deciding to invest in a startup.
Limitations & Future Research
This study obviously also has some limitations that should be acknowledged. The first limitation is the sample. The sample size of 56 co-founder teams is not very large, which could make the results less conclusive. Also, the fact that the sample is from the
Netherlands and Germany, indicates that the findings might not be valid for startup co-founder teams in different cultures.
Another limitation is that the constructs are very divers and have a lot of different interpretations. This makes it difficult to measure the constructs properly and in a way where everyone agrees upon. Therefore, the same study might be conducted, using different measures for the same constructs.
A different limitation is the use of subjective scales. Co-founders had to assess team performance, based on their view on productivity and effectivity of the team. As co-founders might have a positive bias in their perspective on performance, the results for team performance might be too optimistic.
Future research should be focussed on testing the generalizability of the findings. First of all, it would be interesting to test whether the findings are the same, when the same tests are conducted in different cultures.
This would create a better understanding of cultural influences on group-level construct like team psychological safety. Also, it would indicate whether the findings of this paper are also applicable in different cultures. Secondly, this research could also be conducted on startup teams. The results could indicate whether co-founder teams are significantly
different from the startup team as a whole and how these differences affect group constructs like team psychological safety. Future research could also be focussed on elaborating on the finding that team psychological safety does not directly influence team performance in co-founder teams. Qualitative studies on the role that social norms play in the relationship between team psychological safety and team performance in co-founder
34 teams could provide further explanations on the findings of this paper.
It would be specifically interesting to see the effects of the absence of social norms on team psychological safety in co-founder teams. Future research can also focus on the improvement of team adaptation in startup co-founder teams. This paper suggests that team adaptation plays an important role in the relationship between team learning behaviour and team performance of co-founder teams. Therefore, it is interesting to know how co-founder teams can improve their adaptation skills. Current research about team adaptation and the improvement of team adaptation is written in the context of work teams in large
organisations. The context of startup co-founder teams is different from the context of large organisations. Therefore, future research should focus on how co-founder teams can be more adaptative, in order to improve their team performance. This type of research can elaborate on the multidimensionality of team adaptation and try to discover which
dimensions of team adaptation are the most important for founder teams and how co-founder teams can improve those dimensions.
Conclusion
In general, this paper shows the role that team adaptation plays in the dynamics between team psychological safety, team learning behaviour and team performance in the context of startup co-founder teams. It shows that team adaptation plays a significant role in this relationship, by mediating the relationship between team learning behaviour and team performance. This paper also shows that team psychological safety does not directly influence team performance in the setting of startup co-founder teams. As a result, this paper illustrates that the context of co-founder teams is truly different from other teams, where team psychological safety is influencing team performance directly.
Future research should elaborate on the findings, in order to understand the exact role of team adaptation in enhancing team performance. Next to that, more research about group constructs, like team psychological safety, in co-founder teams is needed, to thoroughly understand how co-founder teams are different from other kind of teams and how this influences the effects of team psychological safety on team performance.
35
Appendix
Survey Scales36
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