Wang Lingyi, Duan Xu
School of Business, Macau University of Science and Technology, Taipa, Macau SAR, China.
Front Psychol. 2025 Jan 7;15:1501633. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1501633. eCollection 2024.
The increasing generational diversity in modern teams has sparked an ongoing debate about its impact on team performance. Grounded in decision-making and social identity theories, this study explores the multifaceted relationship between generational diversity and team innovation performance, examining the mediating roles of cognitive and affective conflicts and the moderating role of shared leadership. The findings from a three-wave survey of five multi-generational teams in a Chinese organization reveal that generational diversity predicts both cognitive and affective conflicts, which subsequently exert opposing effects on team innovation. Shared leadership positively moderates the relationship between cognitive conflict and team innovation, amplifying the indirect positive effect of generational diversity. However, shared leadership does not moderate the relationship between affective conflict and team innovation. These results offer a more nuanced understanding of the dual role of generational diversity in team innovation and underscore the importance of shared leadership in harnessing its potential benefits.
现代团队中代际多样性的不断增加引发了一场关于其对团队绩效影响的持续辩论。基于决策和社会认同理论，本研究探讨了代际多样性与团队创新绩效之间的多方面关系，考察了认知冲突和情感冲突的中介作用以及共享领导的调节作用。对中国一家组织中的五个多代际团队进行的三波调查结果显示，代际多样性既预测认知冲突也预测情感冲突，而这两种冲突随后对团队创新产生相反影响。共享领导正向调节认知冲突与团队创新之间的关系，放大了代际多样性的间接积极影响。然而，共享领导并未调节情感冲突与团队创新之间的关系。这些结果为代际多样性在团队创新中的双重作用提供了更细致入微的理解，并强调了共享领导在发挥其潜在益处方面的重要性。
