Teammate conscientiousness diversity depletes team cohesion: the mediating effect of intra-team trust and the moderating effect of team coaching

It has been well documented that employees’ conscientiousness positively affects work outcomes. However, few studies have examined the effect of employee conscientiousness differentiation within a team. Drawing on the organizational trust model, this study investigated whether team members’ conscientiousness diversity can affect team cohesion by affecting intrateam trust. Using the time-lag design, we tested 912 employees from 114 teams in an insurance enterprise three times. The results show that individual conscientiousness differentiation within a team is negatively correlated with intrateam trust, while intrateam trust is positively correlated with team cohesion. Intrateam trust plays a mediating role between conscientiousness diversity and team cohesion. Moreover, team coaching plays a moderating role between team conscientiousness diversity and intrateam trust. Specifically, the negative effect of team conscientiousness diversity on intrateam trust exists only when team coaching is low.