The perceived overqualification's effect on innovative work behaviour: Do transformational leadership and turnover intention matter?

The Silver Lining of Perceived Overqualification: Examining the Nexus Between Perceived Overqualification, Career Self-Efficacy and Career Commitment

Aim

This study aimed to investigate how perceived overqualification is linked to an individual's career commitment among service sector employees in China. Additionally, it sought to examine the mediating role of career self-efficacy and the moderating effect of social support.

Methods

This study collected data from 441 employees using a three-wave data collection design with a two-week gap between each round. Moreover, we employed partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to analyze the data.

Results

The findings asserted that perceived overqualification was positively associated with employee career self-efficacy and commitment. Furthermore, career self-efficacy mediated the link between perceived overqualification and career commitment. The study also demonstrated that perceived overqualification and career self-efficacy were influenced by the level of social support received, with a stronger relationship observed when social support was high. These findings highlight the value of fostering social support and career self-efficacy among coworkers to increase overqualified employees' commitment to their careers and provide valuable insights for organizations seeking to manage their talent pool effectively.

Discussion

The study suggests that when employees perceive themselves as overqualified for their job, it can lead to a higher sense of career self-efficacy, which is the belief in one's ability to perform job tasks effectively. This increased self-efficacy, in turn, can lead to a greater commitment to their career. Furthermore, fostering social support and building career self-efficacy can help organizations manage their overqualified pool effectively and improve employee satisfaction and productivity.

Supervisor Leadership and Subordinates’ Innovative Work Behaviors: Creating a Relational Context for Organizational Sustainability

Under turbulent environmental changes during the pandemic, organizational sustainability requires employees of all levels to perform innovative work behaviors in their daily jobs. Since virtual work environments could deteriorate the quality of collaborative interactions and interpersonal bonds among employees, organizations need to create more relation-focused contexts to trigger innovative behaviors from people. This study aims to explore the influence of supervisors’ relational leadership on the contexts in which subordinates are drawn to innovative work behaviors. Particularly, this study explains the process of this relationship by considering the psychological contract construct as the mediating variable, assuming that the social exchange between employees and the organization influences their decision to perform innovative behaviors. A total of 237 newcomers from a Korean conglomerate participated in the study, and surveys were conducted at two time points for the same participant to detect changes over time. The results showed that the perception of supervisors’ relational leadership was positively related to employees’ performance in innovative work behaviors over time. This relationship was partially mediated by an individual’s perception of employee promises, implying that a sense of obligation towards the organization could be an essential condition for innovative work behaviors. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed.