The Influence of Teachers’ Research Stress on Teamwork Behavior: A Moderated Mediation Model

Collaborative professional development among teachers is the endogenous driving force for accelerating the evolution across interdisciplinary fields and for producing high-quality scientific research outcomes. Grounded in fairness heuristic theory, a moderated mediation model was proposed and tested on teachers’ knowledge-sharing willingness, perceptions of organizational justice, research stress, and teamwork behavior in Shandong universities in China. An online survey was conducted using convenience sampling and data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and hierarchical regression analysis with AMOS and Process software. The findings from 648 valid responses indicate that research stress significantly and positively influences teamwork behavior. The knowledge-sharing willingness partially mediates the relationship between research stress and teamwork behavior. Additionally, perceived organizational justice play a moderating role in the relationships between research stress and teamwork behavior, research stress and the knowledge-sharing willingness, and knowledge-sharing willingness and teamwork behavior. By enhancing teachers’ perceptions of organizational justice, universities can effectively mitigate research stress, foster knowledge sharing and teamwork, ultimately leading to improved interdisciplinary research efficiency and innovation capabilities.