Prof. Qinqin Zheng and Researcher Jiashen Wei*, School of Management Fudan University, explore why digital transformation does not automatically produce more innovative teams, and whether thriving innovation depends less on technology itself and more on the climates leaders create around it.

*Jiashen Wei was a doctoral student at Fudan and has since become Assistant Professor at Jiangnan University.

Insight by CoBS Editor Hari Chandana Chinni Related research: Understanding the dark side of digital technostress on team innovation: the roles of deceptive knowledge hiding and team climates, Journal of Knowledge Management (2025) 29 (5): 1682–1707. https://doi.org/10.1108/JKM-07-2024-0826

The widespread use of digital technologies has made them a huge plus for fast collaboration, learning, and innovation. AI driven workflows and cloud-based collaboration platforms are just some of the applications that have emerged in recent times, with the promise of faster decision-making and more effective teams.

However, organizations are beginning to encounter a different, quieter reality. Keeping up with the growing number of digital tools creates increasing pressure as these tools continue to multiply. And in this light, gradually, technology not only fails to draw out creativity but also starts to wear down some of the very conditions teams need to innovate.

The work of Qinqin Zheng and Jiashen Wei invites us to look beyond the optimistic narrative of digital transformation with their research highlighting a less visible but deeply consequential dynamic. Digital stress does not simply exhaust employees. It subtly reshapes how they behave toward one another with serious implications for team innovation.

Why Digital Stress Does Not Always Look Like Burnout

When organizations think about technostress, they often imagine fatigue, disengagement, or outright resistance to new systems. But under sustained digital pressure, employees do not necessarily withdraw from work. Instead, many remain active, responsive, and outwardly cooperative.

Indeed, digital technostress stems from multiple sources, including technology overload, complexity, constant connectivity, perceived job insecurity, and ongoing technological change, and does not necessarily result in reduced effort or disengagement. The strain shows up elsewhere. More often, it leads to quieter coping strategies that are easy to miss and hard to address.

Knowledge Hiding as a Coping Response

One of Zheng and Wei’s key insights is that technostress can change how employees treat knowledge. When under pressure, individuals begin to view their knowledge as a scarce and fragile asset. Indeed, under conditions of digital technostress, employees may adopt deceptive knowledge hiding, using evasive responses or deliberate non-disclosure to protect their perceived competence and job security.

As a result, employees may respond to colleagues’ requests with evasive answers, delays, or polite deflection. They appear helpful on the surface, but meaningful knowledge does not flow. This form of deceptive knowledge hiding is rarely malicious. It is a defensive response to stress and uncertainty.

Over time, however, these small acts accumulate. Teams lose access to diverse perspectives. Collaboration becomes superficial. Innovation slows, not because people stop working, but because the collective intelligence of the team is quietly constrained.

Why Team Climate Makes All the Difference

Leadership and competitive team climates shape the relationship between digital technostress and deceptive knowledge hiding by influencing whether knowledge sharing is perceived as safe or threatening.

On the one hand, organizations that demonstrate strong leadership climates create supportive environments that allow staff members to express their concerns openly. As a result, leaders understand digital challenges and establish direction that enables employees to participate in technology implementation and operational decision-making processes.

Such environments help reduce the defensive behaviours that stress would otherwise trigger. Employees are more likely to seek assistance, share their knowledge, and collaborate in learning new information.

On the other hand, organizations that rely heavily on regular employee assessments and performance tracking systems create conditions in which staff members become more inclined to protect their knowledge. Under these circumstances, digital pressure creates fear rather than learning opportunities, and knowledge hiding becomes a rational survival strategy.

The same technology can therefore produce very different outcomes depending on how teams are led and how success is defined.

Innovation Fails Quietly Before It Fails Openly

As deceptive knowledge hiding becomes more prevalent within teams, knowledge integration and collaborative problem-solving decline, resulting in lower team innovation performance despite continued task execution. Innovation gradually erodes: teams still meet deadlines, tools are still used, and dashboards remain full. Yet beneath the surface, trust weakens and collaboration thins out.

By the time leaders notice declining innovation, the behaviours that caused it are already deeply embedded. Knowledge sharing norms have shifted. Defensive routines feel normal. Reversing them becomes far more difficult than preventing them in the first place.

What This Teaches Us About Digital Transformation

Zheng and Wei’s research ultimately reframes digital transformation as a social and psychological challenge, not just a technical one. The findings indicate that digital transformation does not directly determine innovation outcomes. Instead, its effects depend on how team climates shape employees’ responses to digital technostress.

Organizations that treat digital adoption purely as a systems upgrade risk missing this entirely. Those that invest in supportive leadership, realistic expectations, and healthy team climates are far more likely to turn digital tools into engines of innovation rather than sources of quiet decline.

Useful links:

• See Prof. Zheng’s academic profile and publications
• Read a related article: Driving Innovation during Recession
• Discover School of Management Fudan University
• Apply for the Fudan International MBA with MIT Sloan.

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