AUTHOR=Zhang Min , Zhang Jinyu , Lin Qingxuan , Wang Lei , Zhang Xufan , He Siyu , Nie Zitong 

TITLE=Examining the impact mechanism of intra-team co-opetition on employee creative deviance

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Organizational Psychology

VOLUME=Volume 3 - 2025

YEAR=2025

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/organizational-psychology/articles/10.3389/forgp.2025.1576922

DOI=10.3389/forgp.2025.1576922

ISSN=2813-771X

ABSTRACT=BackgroundCreative deviance is key to producing breakthrough innovations and maintaining core competencies for a team. In contrast, intra-team co-opetition, an important influence on the allocation of team resources, may affect employees' creative deviance.MethodsThis study analyzed the impact mechanism of intra-team co-opetition on employee creative deviance based on the conservation of resources theory. We collected data from 205 employees in scenario experiment and 354 employees in the questionnaire.ResultsThe findings of polynomial regression and response surface analysis indicate that consistency in competition and cooperation within teams can lead to lesser knowledge power loss. When competition and cooperation levels within teams are inconsistent, they may not be able to attain their intended results. Furthermore, we found that when competition and cooperation levels within teams are inconsistent, knowledge power loss in the “low competition-high cooperation” combination was lower than the “high competition-low cooperation” combination. Thus, knowledge power loss can mediate between intra-team co-opetition and employee creative deviance.ConclusionThis study reveals the micro-mechanism of different combinations of co-opetition within the team, enriches the research results in the field of co-opetition and creative deviance, and provides reference for promoting team innovation performance and emerging more breakthrough innovation achievements.