A study of the effect of team diversity on employee innovative behavior: The mediating role of psychological capital

In today's extremely competitive market environment, employee innovative behavior determines the innovation ability of the enterprise, and the innovation ability of the enterprise determines whether the enterprise can survive and develop under brutal market competition; thus, enhancing employee innovative behavior becomes critical for the long-term survival and development of the enterprise.This paper delves into the theoretical mechanisms by which team diversity and psychological capital affect employee innovative behavior. It leverages social identity theory and conservation of resources theory to provide a comprehensive understanding of these research. The study suggests that psychological capital acts as a mediator in this relationship, serving as a key factor that connects the elements of team diversity with the outcomes of employee innovative behavior. To empirically validate the proposed research model, which connects team diversity, psychological capital, and employee innovative behavior, the study gathered data from a national survey, resulting in 387 valid responses. The analysis employed PLS-SEM to conduct reliability and validity assessments, as well as tests for direct and mediating effects. The research results show that team information diversity can directly and significantly affect employee innovative behavior, team underlying diversity does not directly influence employee innovative behavior; team informational diversity significantly impacts employees' self-efficacy, optimism, hope, and resilience, team underlying diversity significantly affects self-efficacy, optimism, and resilience, but not hope; Self-efficacy and hope do not influence employee innovative behavior, resilience and optimism significantly influence employee innovative behavior. optimism and resilience play a partially mediating role between team information diversity and employee innovative behavior; and optimism and resilience play a completely mediating role between team underlying diversity and employee innovative behavior.