Task Conflict and Employee Creativity: The Critical Roles of Learning Orientation and Goal Congruence

• Author: Imanol Belausteguigoitia,Dirk De Clercq,Zahid Mohammad Rahman
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.21761
• Date: 01 January 2017
• Published date: 01 January 2017

Human Resource Management, January–February 2017, Vol. 56, No. 1. Pp. 93–109

© 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com).

DOI:10.1002/hrm.21761

Correspondence to: Dirk De Clercq, Goodman School of Business, Brock University, St. Catharines, Canada,

Phone:+1 905 688 5550 x5187, E-mail: ddeclercq@brocku.ca

has a central role in personal and organizational

effectiveness, we lack a clear understanding of

how such behavior emerges, particularly from

knowledge exchanges among employees, which

might involve confrontations and conflicting

viewpoints (Chen & Chang, 2005; Farh, Lee, &

Farh, 2010; Hoever, van Knippenberg, van Ginkel,

& Barkema, 2012). Such task conflict might spur

novel idea generation, but the pressures and inter-

personal animosity that often accompany it also

could challenge this process (De Dreu & Weingart,

2003; Janssen & Giebels, 2013). For HR managers,

it thus is critical to understand the conditions in

which task conflict enhances or hinders employee

creativity.

Why are some employees more

likely to engage in creative behav-

ior than others? Human resource

(HR) researchers and practitio-

ners acknowledge the increas-

ing need for organizations to instill creativity

in their employees to respond to technological

changes, competitive pressures, and globalization

(Binyamin & Carmeli, 2010; Wilkens & London,

2006). Creativity in this sense pertains to the gen-

eration of novel and useful ideas for new products,

services, or processes (Zhou & George, 2001), and

it enhances employees’ job performance and satis-

faction (Gilson, Mathieu, Shalley, & Ruddy, 2005;

Kim, Hon, & Crant, 2009).1 Although creativity

TASK CONFLICT AND EMPLOYEE

CREATIVITY: THE CRITICAL ROLES

OF LEARNING ORIENTATION

ANDGOAL CONGRUENCE

DIRK DE CLERCQ, ZAHID MOHAMMAD RAHMAN,

ANDIMANOL BELAUSTEGUIGOITIA

We add to human resource literature by investigating how the contribution of

task confl ict to employee creativity depends on employees’ learning orientation

and their goal congruence with organizational peers. We postulate a positi ve

relationship between task confl ict and employee creativity and predict that this

relationship is augmented by learning orientation but attenuated by goal congru-

ence. We also argue that the mitigating effect of goal congruence is more salient

among employees who exhibit a low learning orientation. Our results, captured

from employees and their supervisors in a large, Mexican-based organization,

confi rm these hypotheses. The fi ndings have important implications for human

resource managers who seek to foster creativity among employees. © 2015 Wiley

Periodicals, Inc.

Keywords: employee creativity, task confl ict, learning orientation, goal

congruence

94 HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT, JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2017

Human Resource Management DOI: 10.1002/hrm

When organizations

seek to promote

creativity, their

employees might

hesitate to leverage

diverging opinions

into novel ideas, for

fear of undermining

the status quo

associated with the

current organizational

goal set.

ideas. In most organizations, task conflict is a

significant element of employees’ daily function-

ing that they cannot avoid, even if the organiza-

tion seeks to limit it (De Dreu & Weingart, 2003;

Hoever et al., 2012). For example, to the extent

that employees’ tasks are interdependent (Van der

Vegt, Emans, & van de Vliert, 1999) or they need

to compete for limited company resources (Luo,

Slotegraaf, & Pan, 2006), diverging viewpoints

about their job tasks likely are inevitable.

Accordingly, we examine the interplay of task

conflict with two critical contingencies (learn-

ing orientation and goal congruence), as discrete

dimensions that underlie employee creativity.

Task conflict increases the potential for employee

creativity, but the extent to which this potential

gets realized depends on employees’ propensity to

change the current organizational situation (Zhou

& George, 2001), which in turn depends on their

learning orientation and goal congruence with

organizational peers. Employees’ learning orienta-

tion speaks to their personal orientation to extend

their current knowledge set flexibly and solicit

the expertise and skills of others (Dweck, 1986;

Wilkens & London, 2006). It may facilitate the

conversion of task conflict into creativity because

it prompts the associated ability to generate novel

combinations of divergent knowledge (Button,

Mathieu, & Zajac, 1996). Goal congruence instead

captures the extent to which employees believe

that they share similar organizational goals with

peers (Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998). When such

perceptions of goal congruence are high, employ-

ees should be more likely to believe that the gen-

eration of novel ideas can drastically upset the

status quo (Vancouver & Schmitt, 1991), such that

they would expect more organizational resistance

to their ideas.2

By investigating learning orientation and

goal congruence as moderators of the task con-

flict–employee creativity relationship, we provide

important results for HR managers because these

variables offer tools for countering the danger of

employees simply adhering to the status quo dur-

ing conflict-laden exchanges. A learning orienta-

tion is a personal factor that relates to employees’

ability to generate novel combinations of personal

and peer knowledge (Gong, Huang, & Farh, 2009).

Goal congruence is a contextual factor, associated

with the anticipation that novel ideas will not

be resisted in the organizational context (Zhou

& George, 2001). Moreover, we acknowledge the

interdependency of these personal and contextual

factors for the effective application of task con-

flict. That is, we predict that the inhibiting effect

of goal congruence gets mitigated when employ-

ees are more learning oriented. The organizational

We posit that even when opposing viewpoints

help employees develop novel ideas, the strength

of this beneficial relationship may vary signifi-

cantly, depending on other factors (Farh et al.,

2010). Previous research suggests that the positive

relationship between task conflict and general per-

formance outcomes may be less prevalent in the

presence of negative side effects, such as cogni-

tive overload (Carnevale & Probst, 1998; De Dreu

& Weingart, 2003) or destructive relationship

dynamics (Janssen & Giebels, 2013; Simons &

Peterson, 2000). In this study, we predict that the

conversion of task conflict into employee creativ-

ity depends on the ability of their organizations

to overcome employees’ reliance on their current

knowledge set and adherence to established orga-

nizational goals (Leonard-Barton, 1992; Zhou &

George, 2001). To the extent that

employees embrace the comfort of

their current expertise (Schneider,

Goldstein, & Smith, 1995), they

likely fail to recognize the need for

change (Gilbert, 2005; Oreg, 2003).

This propensity may diminish their

ability to evaluate opposing view-

points and how these viewpoints

might be used to improve the cur-

rent organizational situation (Enz,

1988). Moreover, even when orga-

nizations seek to promote creativ-

ity, their employees might hesitate

to leverage diverging opinions into

novel ideas, for fear of undermin-

ing the status quo associated with

the current organizational goal set

(Sutton & Hargadon, 1996). In par-

ticular, employees may expect that

their novel ideas will be met with

strong resistance from organiza-

tional peers, because novel ideas can

threaten existing privileges and organizational

practices (LePine & Van Dyne, 1998; Zhou &

George, 2001).

Understanding which circumstances encour-

age employees to leverage task conflict into greater

creativity, despite the presence of these challenges,

therefore requires an elaboration of the conditions

in which employees become attuned to and act on

conflicting viewpoints. Prior research has tended

to focus on the performance benefits of task con-

flict in general (e.g., De Church & Marks, 2001;

Jehn & Bendersky, 2003; cf. De Dreu, 2006), rather

than its conditional effects for the emergence of

creative behavior (Farh etal., 2010; Hoever etal.,

2012). Thus, HR managers clearly need more

insights into when conflicting viewpoints are most

likely to contribute to the generation of novel