Do good relationships contribute to innovative behaviour? A study of relationship conflict affecting team innovative behaviour

Abstract This study examines the relationship between relationship conflict and cross‐functional team innovative behaviour with transactive memory system (TMS) as a mediator and team‐oriented leadership as a moderator. Adopting a two‐wave data collection procedure, 584 team members and 113 team leaders from 20 organizations participated in this study. The PROCESS macro for SPSS was used to test the hypothesized relationships. The results indicate that the TMS mediates the relationship between relationship conflict and cross‐functional team innovative behaviour. Moreover, team‐oriented leadership moderates the relationship between relationship conflict and cross‐functional team innovative behaviour as well as between relationship conflict and the transactive memory system. Additionally, it moderates the indirect effect of relationship conflict and cross‐functional team innovative behaviour via the TMS. In particular, all three relationships become weaker when team‐oriented leadership is high. Based on social information processing theory, this study makes an additional contribution to the current conflict management literature by providing empirical evidence on the mediating role of the TMS and the moderating role of team‐oriented leadership in how relationship conflict affects cross‐functional team innovative behaviour.