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This study aims to offer insights regarding the impact of emotional conflict on innovation behavior. This study also explores the boundary conditions by examining the moderating effects of leader-member exchange (LMX) and team-member exchange (TMX) on the relationship between emotional conflict and innovation behavior.

This study used a questionnaire survey to collect data in China. Hypotheses were tested using hierarchical regression analysis. To test for inverted U-shaped relationship between emotional conflict and innovation behavior, the authors computed the squared term for emotional conflict. To investigate moderating roles of LMX and TMX, the authors carried out an interaction term between the main effect variables (emotional conflict and emotional conflict²) and the moderating variables (LMX and TMX).

The empirical findings indicated that emotional conflict had an inverted U-shaped relationship with innovation behavior. Furthermore, LMX and TMX moderated the inverted U-shaped relationship between the emotional conflict and innovation behavior in such a way that the inverted U-shaped relationship was flatter in high-quality LMX and TMX than in low-quality LMX and TMX. That is to say, LMX and TMX may dampen the positive effects of lower levels of emotional conflict on innovation behavior; yet, it may also weaken the negative effects of higher levels of emotional conflict on innovation behavior.

This research can be extended in several ways. First, future research can investigate the impact mechanism of emotional conflict on innovation behavior. Second, future research can analyze other types of moderators at different levels. The last but not the least, future research can test the results using heterogeneous samples. Despite these potential limitations, this study provides an elaborate understanding of the conflict–creativity relationship by outlining the inverted U-shaped relationship between emotional conflict and innovation behavior under the LMX and TMX contexts, which can make important contributions to the conflict management literature.

The findings of this study offer some guidance on how to stimulate innovation behavior through emotional conflict. It suggests that managers should maintain the emotional conflict at the moderate level. Furthermore, managers can strengthen the LMX and TMX to avoid the negative effects of high levels of emotional conflict, and several practices are provided as well.

This study develops an exhaustive understanding of the conflict–creativity relationship by figuring the curvilinear relationship between emotional conflict and innovation behavior, which is the response to the call of Posthuma to focus on the outcomes of conflict management. The findings further provide an empirical evidence of the conceptual argument that the consequences of conflict depend on the situational context by pointing out the important contingency factors of LMX and TMX.