Negative Group Affective Tone and Innovation: Nonlinear Moderating Role of Team Mindfulness

Teams often experience negative affective states during the execution of innovative tasks. Negative group affective tone does not necessarily lead to unfavorable outcomes. Grounded in the theories of affect-as-information and mindfulness, this study proposes that team mindfulness nonlinearly moderates the relationship between negative group affective tone and team innovation through the mechanism of external knowledge acquisition. Data collected from 62 research and development teams were analyzed to test the proposed hypotheses. The empirical findings support our hypotheses. Both theoretical and practical implications are discussed.