Research On The Influence Mechanism Of Team Relationship Conflict On Team And Employee Creaticity

Innovation plays an increasingly vital function in improving the sustainable competitive advantage of enterprises,which has been considered as the primary driving force for development.Especially in the era when the division of labor is becoming more and more refined,the individual and team creativity,as the engine of the effectiveness of innovation and creative tasks,is an effective way for an enterprise to maintain its competitive advantage and vitality.At the same time,team relationship conflict has been proved to be an important challenge affecting whether the team can effectively enhance creativity and maintain enterprise competitiveness.Therefore,the in-depth analysis of the mechanisms of team relationship conflict on employees and team creativity have great significance.In view of the important impacts of team relationship conflict on employee and team creativity,many studies have focused on the impact of team relationship conflict on creativity,but the attention is obviously insufficient.First of all,although most existing studies confirm that team relationship conflict has a negative effect on creativity,but some scholars have pointed out that there may be a positive effect between them in recent years.Therefore,the results of existing empirical analysis have not reached an unified conclusion.The main reason for the inconsistency of current research conclusions may be an oversight on the importance of potential boundary conditions of the relationship between team relationship conflict and creativity.Secondly,the exploration of the internal mechanism between team relationship conflict and creativity needs to be strengthened.Finally,most of the existing studies on the relationship between team relationship conflict and creativity only focus on a single level,such as individuals or teams.Although scholars usually regard employee creativity as the basis of team creativity,but team creativity is not a simple aggregation of employee creativity,and it cannot be simply assumed that team relationship conflicts have the same impact on individual creativity and team creativity.The current research lacks of exploring the influence mechanism of team relationship conflict on employee and team creativity from a cross-level perspective.To sum up,this study mainly addresses the following three questions:(1)Does boundary condition research,such as collectivism,affect the relationship between team relationship conflict and team creativity?(2)Does team learning can explain the intermediate mechanism of team relationship conflict on team creativity?Do leadership factors,such as transformational leadership,can moderate these relationships?(3)From the perspective of efficacy,does team relationship conflict has different effects on employees and team creativity through the cross-level research?Do cultural factors,such as team power distance,can moderate these relationships?This study will apply social identity theory,threat regulation theory and social cognition theory,and comprehensively consider situational factors,leadership factors and cultural factors to explore the multi-level influence mechanism of team relationship conflict on employee creativity and team creativity.At the same time,based on the valid questionnaire survey results of 466 employees from 83 teams,data analysis was conducted through multiple regression analysis,cross-level analysis,cross-level adjustment test and cross-level mediation test to test the three theoretical models of this study.To be specific,this study consists of three sub-studies.The first sub-study aims to examine the mechanism of the impact of team relationship conflict on team creativity.Based on social identity theory,this study explores whether collectivism(horizontal collectivism and vertical collectivism)has a boundary effect on the team relationship conflict-team creativity relationship.The results indicate that:(1)the relationship between team relationship conflict and team creativity is inverted U-shaped;(2)the inverted U-shaped relation between team relationship conflict and team creativity is positively moderated by horizontal collectivism;(3)the inverted U-shaped relation between team relationship conflict and team creativity is negatively moderated by vertical collectivism.The second sub-study seeks to investigate the mediating mechanism of team learning between team relationship conflict and team creativity and the moderating effect of transformational leadership on the relationship between team relationship conflict and team learning basded on the threat regulation theory.The results indicate that:(1)the relationship between team relationship conflict and team learning is a significant inverted U-shaped curve;(2)the relation between team relationship conflict and team creativity is mediated by team learning;(3)the inverted U-shaped relation between team relationship conflict and team learning is positively moderated by transformational leadership.The third sub-study set goals to explore the mechanisms of team relationship conflict on employee and team creativity through a cross-level study.Based on social cognition theory,this study explores the mediating role of team efficacy between team relationship conflict and team creativity,and the mediating role of creative self-efficacy between team relationship conflict and employee creativity from the perspective of self-efficacy.At the same time,it considers the moderating role of team power distance among them.Through cross-hierarchy regression analysis,some results have been pointed out:(1)an inverted U-shaped relationship between team relationship conflict and team efficacy;(2)team efficacy played a partial mediating role in the relationship between team relationship conflict and team creativity;(3)Team relationship conflict negatively affects innovative self-efficacy and employee creativity;(4)Self-efficacy played a mediating role in the relationship between team conflict and employee creativity;(5)Team power distance positively moderates the inverted U-shaped relationship between team relationship conflict and team efficacy;(6)Team power distance enhances the negative effect of team relationship conflict and employee innovation self-efficacy.Based on the above research conclusion,the main theoretical contribution of this research mainly includes the following four points:(1)By applying team conflict relationship to the creativity research field,this study establishs an inverted u-shaped relationship between team relationship conflict and team creativity,which not only expands the application scenarios and values of team relationship conflict,but also provides a new perspective for us to understand the relationship between team relationship conflict and creativity.(2)Through the study of the mediating roles of team learning,team efficacy and creative self-efficacy in the relationship between team relationship conflict and creativity,the paper explains how team relationship conflict affects creativity from the perspectives of team learning and efficacy,and strengthens the understanding of the internal mechanism of team relationship conflict and creativity.(3)By examining the moderating effects of collectivism(horizontal collectivism and vertical collectivism),transformational leadership and team power distance,this study expands the research perspective on the process boundary conditions of team relationship conflict.;(4)By teating the mechanism of team relationship conflict on team and employee creativity through cross-level,this study verifies the differentiated impacts of team conflict on individual creativity and team creativity,and enriches the research on relationship conflict and creativity.In addition,this study also provides several management guidance as follows.(1)The organization and the team should treat the team relationship conflict rationally,consider the "double-edged sword" effect of the team relationship conflict comprehensively,and seek its advantages and avoid its disadvantages effectively;(2)The organization and the team should pay attention to improving the team learning atmosphere and employees' self-efficacy concepts,which can strengthen their learning ability,and effectively facilitate employee creativity and team creativity;(3)The organization and team leaders should closely monitor the level of intra-team relationship conflict,and use collectivism atmosphere,transformative leadership style and effective team power distance to regulate the level of team relationship conflict.