In organizations, innovation outcomes are a substantive function of the affective experience of their members. In the context of teamwork, team affective tone namely, the shared experience of either positive or negative feelings among team members, captured by the mean level of their affect, is associated with team innovation. This effect of affective tone’ intensity relies on the assumption that affect is a homogenous experience within teams. However, this approach neglects the possible degree of heterogeneity of the affective experience among team members, described as team affective tone diversity, which has relevant implications for collective cognitive and behavioral processes. Drawing on affect-as-information theory and the categorization-elaboration model of group diversity; we argue that the effect of team affective tone intensity on team innovation depends on affective tone diversity. Accordingly, a multisource survey study, conducted with 527 teams comprising 2939 team members from a financial corporation, supported an interaction effect in which the positive relationship between team positive affective tone intensity and team innovation is positive only when the diversity of this affective tone is high. Similarly, the negative relationship between team negative affective tone and team innovation occurs only under an increased diversity of team negative affective tone. These results expand knowledge about whether, when, and how the affective experience is conducive to innovation in teams, which has substantive implications for theory development and professional practice in this field of research.
