How and when does trust in coworkers make newcomers more innovative? The dual roles of psychological safety and interpersonal conflict.

Organizations increasingly expect their newcomers not only to adjust to their new environment but also to innovate to improve organizational performance and competitiveness. Relying on the combinational perspective, we develop a model that clarifies how the interplay of interpersonal trust in coworkers with workplace conflict drives (or stifles) newcomer innovativeness. Using three-wave, multisource data from 181 newcomer-supervisor dyads, we find that psychological safety acts as a key mediating mechanism explaining the positive impact of trust in coworkers on newcomer innovative work behavior. We contribute to the literature by demonstrating that task and relationship conflict with coworkers differentially moderate this indirect relationship, such that trust in coworkers positively influences psychological safety and, ultimately, innovative work behavior only when task conflict is high or, alternatively, relationship conflict is low. A scenario-based experiment (N = 407) provides additional evidence for the role of newcomers' uncertainty about support for authentic self-expression as a mediator of (conditional) effects of trust on psychological safety and, ultimately, innovative work behavior. These findings contribute to the socialization and innovation literatures by clarifying what conditions are beneficial, ineffective, or even detrimental to newcomer's innovativeness in the socialization context. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).