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.
Key words
peer monitoring differentiation /
task conflict resolution efficacy /
team learning from failure /
team innovation
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