Although setbacks often happen as a collective experience, teams are an underresearched organizational unit when it comes to learning from setbacks. Despite the popular view that experiencing setbacks may facilitate learning, there are conflicting theoretical assumptions about the influence of setbacks on learning. Whereas one theoretical perspective in this topic area is in line with the proverbial learning from failure, a competing perspective argues that setbacks impede learning processes. This study aims to reconcile these conflicting assumptions by proposing team reflexivity as a moderator between team‐experienced setbacks and team learning. Building on social cognitive theory, we develop a model of learning from experienced setbacks at the team level. We test our hypotheses on a sample of 57 start‐up teams. Our results show that the effects of team‐experienced setbacks differ depending on whether the focus is on affective reactions to or cognitive perceptions of the setback experience. Although the cognitive perception of setbacks generally shows a detrimental effect on team learning, the pattern of results for an affective reaction to setbacks is more complex: The relationship between negative affective reactions to setbacks and team learning is negative for teams with low reflexivity and positive for teams with high reflexivity.

中文翻译：

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从挫折中学习团队：针对初创团队的研究

尽管挫折通常是集体经历，但是在学习挫折时，团队是研究不足的组织单位。尽管流行的观点认为遭受挫折可能有助于学习，但关于挫折对学习的影响的理论假设却相互矛盾。尽管该主题领域的一种理论观点与失败中的谚语学习是一致的，但一种竞争观点认为挫折阻碍了学习过程。本研究旨在通过提出团队反思作为团队经历的挫折与团队学习之间的调节者来调和这些矛盾的假设。在社会认知理论的基础上，我们开发了一种从团队经验丰富的挫折中学习的模型。我们在57个初创团队的样本上检验了我们的假设。我们的结果表明，团队经历的挫折的影响会有所不同，具体取决于重点是对挫折经历的情感反应还是认知。尽管挫折的认知感知通常显示出对团队学习的有害影响，但对挫折的情感反应的结果模式更为复杂：对于低反射性的团队，对挫折的负面情感反应与团队学习之间的关系为负面，而对挫折的团队则为正面高反射性的团队。