Achieving Organisational Functional Change through an Ability to Learn from Failure

Rationale of the Study and Theoretical FrameworkIt has been argued that the long-term success of an organisation is dependent on its capacity to learn from experience (Carmeli and Gittell, 2009). Organisational learning... [ view full abstract ]

Rationale of the Study and Theoretical Framework

It has been argued that the long-term success of an organisation is dependent on its capacity to learn from experience (Carmeli and Gittell, 2009). Organisational learning theorists have posited that it is through an organisation’s reaction to experiences of failure, rather than success that improvement can be achieved (Cyert and March, 1963). Learning from failure has been argued to be essential for future performance because feedback from failure acts to increase adoption of improved practices and processes (Carmeli and Sheaffer, 2008). Prior research has provided support for the fact that organisations learn more from failure than success (Madsen and Desai, 2010). Furthermore, it has been suggested that through the adoption of a focus on small failures, organisations can avoid large failures in the future (Cannon and Edmondson, 2005). While the number of empirical studies on learning from failure is limited (Baumard and Starbuck, 2005; Carmeli and Gittell, 2009), research has suggested that many organisations do not learn from mistakes (Tucker and Edmondson, 2003).

Attitudes towards failure and how they are dealt with can be considered as indications of an organisation’s culture (Rybowiak et al., 1999). A culture which encourages learning from failure has been argued to reduce negative consequences that arise from failure through an increased ability to control damage and encouraging longer term learning and innovation (Frese and Keith, 2015). The primary purpose of this paper is to develop a measure of organisational culture of learning from failure and to investigate its impact on employee improvement behaviour.

Morrison and Phelps (1999) argue that while extra-role discretionary effort from employees such as organisational citizenship behaviour (Organ, 1990) is important, it is not sufficient for future organisational success. They argue that constructive change through employees challenging the present state of operations is essential for future organisational performance. They refer to this type of behaviour as taking charge and define it as entailing “voluntary and constructive efforts, by individual employees, to effect organizationally functional change with respect to how work is executed within the contexts of their jobs, work units, or organizations” (Morrison and Phelps, 1999, p 403). We suggest that a culture of learning from mistakes will encourage employees to feel more willing to engage in taking charge behaviour.

We further posit that employees’ fear of making mistakes will mediate the relationship between a culture of learning from failure and employee taking charge behaviours. Behavioural theory suggests that organisational decision makers respond to failure differently to that of success (Madsen and Desai, 2010). For example, individuals who make errors or mistakes may face severe punishment or penalty from their organisations (Appelbaum, Bregman and Moroz, 1998). Fear has been identified as a key motivator for withholding information in order to protect oneself (Morrison and Milliken, 2000). Making errors or mistakes will adversely affect employee attitudes and behaviours particularly when there are potential negative consequences of their failures being made public (Rybowiak et al., 1999). In this sense, to learn from failure, organisations are required to support employees so that they are able to share information on errors and mistakes without fear of sanction. Moreover, it is often not possible to achieve change and improvement without making mistakes (Frese and Keith, 2015).  We therefore suggest that a culture of learning from failure will decrease employees’ levels of fear of making mistakes, which further encourages them to engage in taking charge behaviours.

In this paper we investigate the factors that influence an organisation’s ability to learn from failure in the context of policing in the United Kingdom. This context is particularly appropriate for the following reasons. Police organisations in the United Kingdom are continuing to face high levels of challenge due to the reduction in resources available to them and the requirement to do more with fewer available resources (HMIC, 2017; HMICFRS, 2017). Key commentators (for example, Curtis, 2014; Thornton, 2016) have identified the need for policing to move from a culture that can be defensive and closed and limits ability to learn from failure to that of a learning culture where people have the freedom and ability to make and admit mistakes.

This paper makes a five-fold contribution. First, we develop a measure of organisational culture of learning from failure. Second, we develop a measure of fear of making mistakes. Third, we examine the relationship between perceptions of organisational culture of learning from failure on discretionary effort to achieve organisational functional change. Fourth we examine the role of fear of making mistakes as a mediator of this relationship. Fifth and finally, we provide an additional study into the factors that influence organisations’ ability to learn from failure to the limited number of prior studies.

Method

We collected data from 665 employees and their co-workers in a police force in the United Kingdom. Individual’s perception of the level of organisational culture of learning from failure and their fear of making mistakes were collected from respondents. Taking charge behaviour of respondents was measured by a close colleague.

We tested the following hypotheses:

Hypothesis 1: An individual’s perception of organisational culture of learning from failure is positively related to their taking charge behaviour.

Hypothesis 2: An individual’s fear of making mistakes mediates the relationship between their perceptions of the organisational culture of learning from failure and their taking charge behaviour.

To measure individual’s perceptions of organisational culture of learning from failure we selected and adapted eight-items from Van Dyck et al.’s (2005) organisational error management culture. Example items are “The force considers mistakes to be an important source of information on how to make improvements”, “After a mistake is made, the focus is on correcting it, not on assigning blame” and Cronbach’s alpha of this scale was .90.

Fear of making mistakes. We created a scale for individual’s fear of making mistakes with five items. To do this we adapted two items from Rybowiak et al.’s (1999) error avoidance attitude scale, two items from Detert and Edmondson’s (2011) negative career consequences of voice scale and one item from Mayer and Gavin’s (2005) trust in top management scale. Examples of the modified items are: “I do not readily make decisions at work because of a fear of negative consequences from making a mistake” and “I do not readily make decisions at work because if I made a mistake, I would not be given the benefit of the doubt regarding my motives and intentions”. The Cronbach’s alpha of the new scale was .92.

Taking charge. We measured taking charge behaviour by adapting the ten-item scale of Morrison and Phelps (1999) to the context of our study. An example item is “She / he often tries to change how her/his job is executed in order to be more effective.” The Cronbach’s alpha of this scale was .95.

Results

We found that perception of organisational culture of learning from failure was positively related to taking charge behaviour (b = .09, p = .015), supporting hypothesis 1. Organisational culture of learning from failure was also found to be negatively related to fear of making mistakes (b = -.66, p = .000). In addition, the analysis found that fear of making mistakes was negatively related to taking charge behaviour (b = -.13, p = .000). By conducting a 1,000-resampling bootstrapping analysis, we found that the indirect effect through fear of making mistakes between organisational culture of learning from failure and taking charge behaviour was significant, as suggested by the 95% confidence intervals (CIs) (b = .080, [.048; .126]). Therefore, Hypothesis 2 was supported. The direct effect was no longer significant (b = .01, [-.071; .091]), suggesting full mediation.

Discussion

The purpose of this study was to investigate the factors that influence organisations’ ability to learn from failures, mistakes and errors. We theorised and found that when an individual’s perception of organisational culture of learning from failure was more positive this related to them being more prepared to engage in discretionary effort to make improvements and changes to the work methods, policies, and procedures in their workplace. Furthermore, we examined the role of fear of making mistakes as an important mediator of this relationship. We found that when an individual’s perception of organisational culture of learning from failure was less positive, this increased their fear of making mistakes and in turn resulted in them being less likely to engage in taking charge behaviour.

This study has important implications for organisations and in particular for police organisations, their employees and the communities they serve. The study provides strong support for Guildford’s (2017) assertion that police organisations need to focus on learning from failure as this will increase their ability to achieve improvements in service delivery and reduce the risk of future failure. As far as is possible, police organisations need to adopt a more positive culture to learn from failure and support employees to allow them to be more confident to make decisions and engage in service improvement behaviour.