TY - JOUR
T1 - Building better teams by identifying conservation professionals willing to learn from failure
AU - Catalano, Allison S.
AU - Jimmieson, Nerina L.
AU - Knight, Andrew T.
PY - 2021/4
Y1 - 2021/4
N2 - Despite abundant literature from beyond the conservation sector on learning from failure, few studies examine conservation professionals, their teams, and their organizations. Using the Theory of Planned Behavior to investigate the drivers of conservation professionals' intentions to engage in learning from failure behaviors, we found that conservation professionals who intend to participate in learning from failure activities are influenced by perceptions of social norms. Higher levels of psychological safety were found to strengthen the positive relationship between self-efficacy and intentions to engage in learning from failure behaviors with a higher degree of interpersonal risk, whereas lower levels of psychological safety undermined high levels of self-efficacy. Organizations seeking to empower those who are confident they can learn from failure must recognize the key role that psychological safety plays in supporting such individuals, implement team training to foster psychological safety, and ensure leaders promote, by their own example, learning from failure as an opportunity to more effectively, cost-efficiently, and equitably deliver conservation outcomes.
AB - Despite abundant literature from beyond the conservation sector on learning from failure, few studies examine conservation professionals, their teams, and their organizations. Using the Theory of Planned Behavior to investigate the drivers of conservation professionals' intentions to engage in learning from failure behaviors, we found that conservation professionals who intend to participate in learning from failure activities are influenced by perceptions of social norms. Higher levels of psychological safety were found to strengthen the positive relationship between self-efficacy and intentions to engage in learning from failure behaviors with a higher degree of interpersonal risk, whereas lower levels of psychological safety undermined high levels of self-efficacy. Organizations seeking to empower those who are confident they can learn from failure must recognize the key role that psychological safety plays in supporting such individuals, implement team training to foster psychological safety, and ensure leaders promote, by their own example, learning from failure as an opportunity to more effectively, cost-efficiently, and equitably deliver conservation outcomes.
KW - Conservation psychology
KW - Failure
KW - Leadership
KW - Psychological safety
KW - Reflection
KW - Social norms
KW - Teamwork
KW - Theory of Planned Behavior
KW - ‘Safe-fail’ culture
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85102628915&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.biocon.2021.109069
DO - 10.1016/j.biocon.2021.109069
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85102628915
VL - 256
JO - Biological Conservation
JF - Biological Conservation
SN - 0006-3207
M1 - 109069
ER -