The Impact Of Over-qualified Perception On Employee Behavior

Perceived overqualification denotes situations in which the staffs feel that their qualifications such as knowledge,work experience and skills exceed the current job requirements.As the most common form of underemployment,previous studies focused more on its negative impacts on organizations and individuals with the perspectives of relative deprivation theory and equity theory.With the rise of Positive Psychology and Positive Organizational Behavior,it becomes a hot topic to know how to discover individuals' capacity and utilize better.Some recent researches have indicated that perceived overqualification sometimes lead to positive outcomes when employees view their surplus capability positively.The objective of this study is to investigate the bright side of perceived overqualification which it may affect the voice behavior through stuffs' cognitive decision-making processes,in addition to explore the underlying mechanism and boundary condition.Using the methodology of survey questionnaire,this study indicates that:(1)Perceived overqualification in Chinese consist two dimensions: perceived mismatch and perceived no-challenge,and the revised questionnaire has 6 items with good reliability and validity.(2)Perceived overqualification have significant differences among demographic variables such as age,position and Organizational Types.For example,managers are more likely to feel that they are overqualified than general stuff.(3)Perceived overqualification have a significant positive effect on voice behavior,thus perceived mismatch and perceived no-challenge have significant positive effect on promotive voice and prohibitive voice.(4)Self-efficacy positively affects the voice behavior,and it also plays a partial mediating role between perceived overqualification and employee's voice behavior.(5)This indirect effect is positively moderated by individual's perceived insider status,thus the employee's perception of overqualification has stronger positive relationship with voice behavior through self-efficacy when employee has higher perceived insider status.The results of the study validate the theoretical assumptions and explain the mechanism and boundary of perceived overqualification impacting on employee's voice behavior.We show that perceived overqualification can positively influence employee promotive voice and prohibitive voice through a heightened self-efficacy.This finding is the response to the call for an exploration of the bright side of employee's overqualification.They can have higher control over their work and thus a higher probability of making a difference in the work place when they view the adequate capacity positively.The findings also offer insights to business practitioners.On the one hand,this study shows that overqualification does not necessarily lead to negative results such as lower job satisfaction as well as more deviant behavior.Employees can feel good and do well with their surplus qualification.On the other hand,the study indicates that overqualified employees might potentially benefit the organization through their surplus talents and competence.Supervisors should figure out ways to empower them and give them more support to take more initiatives.