Innovative behaviour and job involvement at the price of conflict and less satisfactory relations with co-workers

Although innovative behaviour is widely claimed to contribute to long term organizational effectiveness, the price that an individual worker may have to pay for taking an innovative approach has generally not been examined. The present study hypothesizes that a worker's innovative behaviour interacts with his or her job involvement in producing conflict and less satisfactory relations with resisting co-workers who want to prevent innovative change. Moreover, conflict with co-workers is hypothesized to mediate the interactive effect of innovative behaviour and job involvement on satisfaction with co-worker relations. These hypotheses were supported in a survey study among 76 secondary school teachers based on supervisor ratings of the teachers' innovative behaviour and teachers' self-report data of job involvement, conflict with co-workers and satisfaction with co-worker relations.