PDF(1409 KB)
The Double-Edged Sword Effect of Peer Monitoring Differentiation on Team Innovation: The Moderating Role of Task Conflict Resolution Efficacy and the Mediating Role of Team Learning from Failure
Chen Chao, Zhang Shuman
Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2026, Vol. 49 ›› Issue (1) : 145-155.
PDF(1409 KB)
PDF(1409 KB)
The Double-Edged Sword Effect of Peer Monitoring Differentiation on Team Innovation: The Moderating Role of Task Conflict Resolution Efficacy and the Mediating Role of Team Learning from Failure
To address the common "free-rider" phenomenon in teams, members often focus on the performance outcomes or behaviors of their colleagues. This includes directly expressing dissatisfaction with colleagues who violate team norms or engage in other inappropriate behaviors, and warning underperforming members. Thus, peer monitoring permeates the entire team innovation process and has a significant impact on team innovation. It is worth noting that due to differences in expertise, personality, abilities, and other aspects among team members, there are inevitably differences in how members monitor their colleagues. Specifically, some team members exhibit a high level of peer monitoring, they not only actively encourage other members to increase their work effort but also explicitly point out the potential negative consequences of low performance. They may also attempt to evoke feelings of guilt in members who lack team spirit or engage in non-compliant behaviors. While some members participate less in peer monitoring, or even completely disregard whether others are acting in ways that are consistent with achieving team consistency goals, this leads to the inevitable phenomenon of peer monitoring differentiation within the team. Therefore, based upon the categorization-elaboration model (CEM), this research explores how and when peer monitoring differentiation influences team innovation.
By employing statistical analysis method (i.e., SPSS) and analyzing the data from 82 groups with 440 members with a multiple-source and time-lagged research design, the present study obtained the following results. First, task conflict resolution efficacy could significantly moderate the relationship between peer monitoring differentiation and team innovation. Second, task conflict resolution efficacy could significantly moderate the relationship between peer monitoring differentiation and team learning from failure. Specifically, under high-level task conflict resolution efficacy, peer monitoring differentiation can promote team learning from failure. However, under low-level task conflict resolution efficacy, peer monitoring differentiation can hinder team learning from failure. Third, team learning from failure can directly enhance team innovation. Finally, team learning from failure can mediate the moderated relationship between peer monitoring differentiation, task conflict resolution efficacy, and team innovation.
This paper makes the following theoretical contributions. First, peer monitoring, a common phenomenon in teams, has increasingly attracted the attention of scholars. However, the impact of peer monitoring differentiation on team outputs, especially team innovation, remains unclear. Through an integrated approach involving moderation and mediation analysis, this study delves into the critical theoretical and practical question of "When and how does peer monitoring differentiation affect team innovation?" The findings elucidate the "black box" mechanism of coworker supervision differentiation's influence on team innovation performance, providing theoretical insights for preventing its negative impacts and harnessing its positive effects. Second, CEM emphasizes the significant regulatory role of task demands on team diversity and team outputs. Furthermore, scholars have called for more exploration of the effects of task conflict resolution efficacy. Based on this, the study discovers the "double-edged sword" effect of peer monitoring differentiation on team learning from failure and examines task conflict resolution efficacy as a moderating variable. Grounded in the CEM, by integrating research on both coworker supervision differentiation and task conflict resolution efficacy, this paper enriches the regulatory mechanisms of coworker supervision differentiation and deepens the investigation into the effects of task conflict resolution efficacy. Third, a literature review reveals that the process through which peer monitoring differentiation affects team innovation is still unclear. Based on the CEM, this study explores how peer monitoring differentiation, moderated by task conflict resolution efficacy, affects team innovation performance through team learning from failure, which embodies thorough information integration and processing. These findings help scholars enhance their understanding of the pathway mechanisms between coworker supervision differentiation and team innovation performance, further supplementing the process mechanism research on coworker supervision differentiation.
peer monitoring differentiation / task conflict resolution efficacy / team learning from failure / team innovation
| [1] |
黄海艳, 苏德金, 李卫东. (2016). 失败学习对个体创新行为的影响——心理弹性与创新支持感的调节效应. 科学学与科学技术管理, 37(5), 161-169.
|
| [2] |
黄昱方, 王君. (2017). 同事监督对团队绩效的影响——团队信任和努力的双中介模型. 工业技术经济, 36(8), 109-116.
|
| [3] |
黄昱方, 吴菲. (2019). 同事监督对团队绩效的影响——团队信任和团队领导—成员交换的作用. 软科学, 33(11), 75-79, 84.
|
| [4] |
金子祺, 付亦宁, 刘绮莉, 钟博文. (2024). 知识关联整合对大学跨学科团队创新能力影响机制研究. 创新科技, 24(2), 82-92.
|
| [5] |
This article explores the linkages between strategies for managing different types of conflict and group performance and satisfaction. Results from a qualitative study of 57 autonomous teams suggest that groups that improve or maintain top performance over time share 3 conflict resolution tendencies: (a) focusing on the content of interpersonal interactions rather than delivery style, (b) explicitly discussing reasons behind any decisions reached in accepting and distributing work assignments, and (c) assigning work to members who have the relevant task expertise rather than assigning by other common means such as volunteering, default, or convenience. The authors' results also suggest that teams that are successful over time are likely to be both proactive in anticipating the need for conflict resolution and pluralistic in developing conflict resolution strategies that apply to all group members.2008 APA
|
| [6] |
|
| [7] |
|
| [8] |
|
| [9] |
In this study, we examine a complex pathway through which CEOs, who exhibit relational leadership, may improve the quality of strategic decisions of their top management teams (TMTs) by creating psychological conditions of trust and facilitating learning from failures in their teams. Structural equation modeling (SEM) analyses of survey data collected from 77 TMTs indicate that (1) the relationship between CEO relational leadership and team learning from failures was mediated by trust between TMT members; (2) team learning from failures mediated the relationship between team trust and strategic decision quality. Supplemented by qualitative data from two TMTs, these findings suggest that CEOs can improve the quality of strategic decisions their TMTs make by shaping a relational context of trust and facilitating learning from failures.
|
| [10] |
Organizations must learn and adapt to succeed in today’s ever-changing business environment, so it is essential for scholars to better understand the antecedents to learning processes among individuals, teams, and organizations as a whole. In this article, the authors offer a multilevel theory that illustrates how individuals’ motivation for different achievement goals, that is, goal orientations, shape the way they individually and collectively participate in organizational learning processes. This framework is grounded in a theoretical synthesis of organizational learning and achievement goal theories, which highlights the value of using an emergent motivational theory to better understand how predominantly cognitive learning processes may emerge across levels in organizations. In particular, the authors illustrate how mastery- and performance-oriented norms emerge in work groups and influence information interpretation and integration. The authors further describe how groups’ goal orientation norms can become embedded in the organizational culture, which impacts the ways in which learning processes are institutionalized throughout the organization. This theoretical framework provides a fuller depiction of why and how learning unfolds in organizations, which may facilitate future research on the microfoundations of organizational learning and how these can enable organizations to enhance their capabilities.
|
| [11] |
|
| [12] |
Past research has implicitly assumed that only mean levels of trust and monitoring in teams are critical for explaining their interrelations and their relationships with team performance. In this article, the authors argue that it is equally important to consider the dispersion in trust and monitoring that exists within teams. The authors introduce "trust asymmetry" and "monitoring dissensus" as critical dispersion properties of trust and monitoring and hypothesize that these moderate the relationships between mean monitoring, mean trust, and team performance. Data from a cross-lagged panel study and a partially lagged study support the hypotheses. The first study also offered support for an integrative model that includes mean and dispersion levels of both trust and monitoring. Overall, the studies provide a comprehensive and clear picture of how trust and monitoring emerge and function at the team level via mean and dispersion.
|
| [13] |
|
| [14] |
|
| [15] |
|
| [16] |
Power is an inherent characteristic of social interaction, yet research has yet to fully explain what power and power dispersion may mean for conflict resolution in work groups. We found in a field study of 42 organizational work groups and a laboratory study of 40 negotiating dyads that the effects of power dispersion on conflict resolution are contingent on the level of interactants' power, thereby explaining contradictory theory and findings on power dispersion. We found that when members have low power, power dispersion is positively related to conflict resolution, but when members have high power, power dispersion is negatively related to conflict resolution (i.e., power equality is better). These findings can be explained by the mediating role of intragroup power struggles. Together, these findings suggest that power hierarchies function as a heuristic solution for conflict and contribute to adaptive social dynamics in groups with low, but not high, levels of power.(c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved.
|
| [17] |
|
| [18] |
Failure plays a pivotal role in entrepreneurial learning. Knowledge of the learning process that enables an entrepreneur to re-emerge stronger after a failure, though considerable, is fragmented. This paper systematically collects relevant literature, assigns it to the stages of the experiential learning process (concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, active experimentation; Kolb, 1984), evaluates the research coverage of each stage and identifies promising avenues for future research.
|
| [19] |
|
| [20] |
Three studies examined the impact of downward comparisons on the self. Worse-off others exerted an impact only when participants drew an analogy between themselves and the other. When participants did draw an analogy, the impact of the other on the self was determined by perceived vulnerability to the other's negative fate. When vulnerability was low, downward comparisons enhanced self-evaluations. When vulnerability was high, downward comparisons deflated self-evaluations, but activated a prevention orientation, boosting motivation aimed at avoiding the negative experience of the other.
|
| [21] |
Peer monitoring, which occurs when individuals notice and respond to their peers' behavior or performance results, is an informal organizational control that has not been extensively studied. Agency theory suggests that peer monitoring should be associated with higher performance because it allows workers whose interests are aligned with those of the organization to encourage their peers to perform well and deters inappropriate behavior by increasing the chances that it would be detected.
|
| [22] |
|
| [23] |
Situational strength pertains to the idea that various characteristics of situations have the ability to restrict the expression and, therefore, the criterion-related validity of individual differences. Despite situational strength’s intuitive appeal, however, little information exists regarding its construct space. This review (a) categorizes extant operationalizations into four facets (constraints, consequences, clarity, and consistency), (b) examines the empirical literature on situational strength—relevant hypotheses, and, on the basis of the proposed taxonomy and literature review, (c) provides several avenues for future theoretical and empirical research. It is the authors’ hope that these efforts will encourage additional research and theorizing on this potentially important psychological construct.
|
| [24] |
|
| [25] |
|
| [26] |
This article proposes that team reflexivity—a deliberate process of discussing team goals, processes, or outcomes—can function as an antidote to team-level biases and errors in decision making. We build on prior work conceptualizing teams as information-processing systems and highlight reflexivity as a critical information-processing activity. Prior research has identified consequential information-processing failures that occur in small groups, such as the failure to discuss privately held relevant information, biased processing of information, and failure to update conclusions when situations change. We propose that team reflexivity reduces the occurrence of information-processing failures by ensuring that teams discuss and assess the implications of team information for team goals, processes, and outcomes. In this article, we present a model of team information-processing failures and remedies involving team reflexivity, and we discuss the conditions under which team reflexivity is and is not likely to facilitate performance.
|
| [27] |
|
| [28] |
Learning from failure can foster innovation, but how a new product development (NPD) team’s learning from failure affects new product performance requires more insights. In particular, the question remains on how collective efficacy, which discerns team members’ belief to achieve desired goals, affects team learning from failure towards improving new product performance. Using social cognitive theory complemented by sensemaking and attribution theories, we examine the effects of NPD teams’ (experiential and vicarious) learning from failure on new product performance and the moderating effects of collective efficacy on these relationships. With survey data collected from 398 responses within 152 NPD teams in Chinese high-tech small and medium-sized enterprises, we find that both experiential and vicarious learning from failure enhance new product performance in terms of speed to market and product innovativeness. Further, as collective efficacy increases, the positive effect of experiential learning from failure on speed to market is strengthened. However, the positive effect of vicarious learning from failure on product innovativeness is weakened. Our results suggest that NPD teams can benefit from experiential and vicarious learning from failure to improve new product performance but must pay attention to the double-edged effect of collective efficacy.
|
| [29] |
Research on the relationship between work group diversity and performance has yielded inconsistent results. To address this problem, the authors propose the categorization-elaboration model (CEM), which reconceptualizes and integrates information/decision making and social categorization perspectives on work-group diversity and performance. The CEM incorporates mediator and moderator variables that typically have been ignored in diversity research and incorporates the view that information/decision making and social categorization processes interact such that intergroup biases flowing from social categorization disrupt the elaboration (in-depth processing) of task-relevant information and perspectives. In addition, the authors propose that attempts to link the positive and negative effects of diversity to specific types of diversity should be abandoned in favor of the assumption that all dimensions of diversity may have positive as well as negative effects. The ways in which these propositions may set the agenda for future research in diversity are discussed.2004 APA, all rights reserved
|
/
| 〈 |
|
〉 |
