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R&D: how ethical conflict in teams can impact innovation

Disagreements and conflict are a natural and common phenomenon within teams. Nearly half of the conflicts that teams report are related to differences in ethical or moral values (as opposed to only task-related disagreements).

03/05/2026

4 min

A team of researchers has been delving into the impact of ethical conflict for research and development teams (R&D). This is an important topic given the role of these teams in pushing the boundaries of knowledge, technology, and innovation.

Understanding team dynamics, and the impact of different types of conflict is a key challenge for organizations. For example, relationship conflict, which involves interpersonal tensions and incompatibilities, can reduce team cohesion, satisfaction, and communication. However, disagreements over task content and outcomes can foster critical thinking and generate a wider range of ideas. This can potentially drive more innovative and well-informed decisions.

“Ethical conflict happens when team members disagree about moral or ethical issues, such as issues of what is right or wrong. We know this is common, and can hurt how the group performs. However, there have been few empirical studies on how these moral disagreements can affect team dynamics, for example in terms of knowledge sharing and innovation,” explains professor Cathy Guo a co-author of the *study. This is particularly important in the sector of R&D where moral dilemmas (e.g. relating to privacy, confidentiality, etc.) can be both common and important.

Negative impact of ethical conflict

The researchers suspected that ethical conflict would negatively impact knowledge and information sharing and ultimately reduce teams’ innovative capacity (e.g. generating and implementing ideas). However, they also believed that process conflict – the distribution of tasks and roles within the team – could moderate the role of ethical disagreements. In other words, teams with clear role distribution, efficient task allocation, and consensus on workflows, were less likely to feel the negative effects of ethical or moral disagreements.

They tested their hypotheses through a study of 90 R&D teams from 34 technology and software companies in China.

“The results were clearly consistent with the idea that ethical conflict negatively affects team innovation through a process called information elaboration,” explains professor Melvyn Hamstra. “We also found that when these ethical conflicts did not co-occur with ‘process’ conflicts and disagreements in teams the negative impact of moral differences would disappear”.

3 strategies to counteract this problem

“We outline three avenues that companies with R&D teams can explore to minimize the potential of ethical conflict to reduce or impinge team innovation”, adds professor Jingjing Yao.

Top management teams can consider developing guidelines or rules/regulations. These help employees navigate ethical decisions and ensure low levels of process conflict in the company. With increasing workforce diversity and other developments such as the rapid advancement of the role of artificial intelligence in the workplace, this is likely to become increasingly important. By setting clear guidelines and fostering an inclusive culture, management can help employees navigate ethical challenges more effectively at the collective level.
Human resource managers can adapt training processes for R&D teams. For example, foster more open communication to support effective processing of all ethically relevant information and sharing knowledge within the team. For this, it is important that leaders model humility: say what you sincerely think, admit mistakes, and invite disagreement without judgement. Ask simple questions and act on the answers, and thank people for sharing.
When ethical conflict is inevitable, R&D managers can look to prioritize solving “process conflict”. Ethical conflict is difficult to reconcile as it involves disagreements about fundamental issues of right and wrong. In contrast, process conflict, which pertains to logistics, coordination, and communication issues, may be more easily resolved. Thus, when ethical conflict is inevitable in R&D teams, managers can focus on enhancing role clarity, aligning responsibilities, and setting up well-defined workflows to indirectly mitigate the negative consequences of ethical conflict.

Avenues to explore in future research

Their study also generated some interesting avenues for further research.

First, they believe it would be useful to examine how ethical conflict evolves and how it influences team processes and outcomes over time. For instance, future research could explore how the co-occurrence of conflicts of distinct types over time would help or hinder with the resolution of ethical conflict.

“For example, one might speculate that if a team successfully resolves a major task conflict and has matured, it might give them the potential to find common ground on an ethical issue as well,” they note.

Second, while the study highlighted how team ethical conflict can have a detrimental impact on innovation, it is also possible that discussions and focus on ethical issues could have benefits for other specific areas of the companies work – that could be explored further.

Methodology:

The researchers sent questionnaires to nearly 300 employees in 90 research teams in Chinese technology and software firms. The researchers designed a series of scales to measure ethical and process conflict, information elaboration and innovation within the teams.

The full study was published in the journal Group Decision and Negotiation. “Ethical Conflict and Team Innovation: A Categorization– Elaboration Model Approach” (2025): Erica Wen Chen (Renmin University of China), Cathy Yang Guo (IÉSEG), Zhechen Yin (Tsinghua University), Melvyn R.W. Hamstra & Jingjing Yao (IÉSEG).