Research On The Influence Of Perceived Overqualification On Employees’ Knowledge Sharing Willingness

Based on the knowledge economy and the social background of university expansion,China’s labor market supply is rapidly increasing and so is the pressure on employment.More and more "highly educated" graduates choose jobs below their own level of qualification in order to be able to get a job on time.This shows that overqualification is a common phenomenon in China and abroad.The sense of overqualification means that individuals perceive that they have more education,experience,and skills than they need for their jobs,and that there is a mismatch between people and jobs.Currently,overqualification is a phenomenon that has received widespread attention from management scholars,and many researchers have focused on a range of negative effects caused by perceived overqualification,such as network idleness and unproductive work behavior.Recently,some scholars have begun to question that existing research overstates the negative effects of overqualification on employees and ignores its potential positive effects.Employees with a higher sense of overqualification usually have knowledge-sharing strengths and capital.If organizations can take full advantage of the excess capabilities of overqualified employees,it is bound to be a win-win situation for both the employee and the organization.Based on this,this thesis selects knowledge sharing willingness as an outcome variable to investigate the mechanism of knowledge sharing willingness by overqualified employees in order to enrich the study of positive outcomes of overqualified employees.Based on conservation of resource theory,this thesis argues that the willingness of overqualified employees to share knowledge is a process by which resource-rich individuals pursue a gaining spiral of resources,and chooses job crafting to characterize this process.Specifically,overqualified employees have relatively abundant but unbalanced time,energy,and qualification resources,and therefore tend to acquire multiple resources through job crafting.Through job crafting,individuals are enriched with human capital,social capital and psychological capital,and have more innovative resources,which will lead to their willingness to share knowledge with their peers or superiors to achieve knowledge utilization and innovation,and gain a gaining spiral of resources to help them achieve their personal goals.In addition,since overqualified employees usually produce positive or negative effects by processing both emotional and cognitive paths,this thesis introduces emotional intelligence as a boundary condition to study the positive effects of Perceived overqualification.Emotional intelligence is defined as an individual’s ability to identify and process emotional information about themselves and others in order to apply that information to guide their own thoughts and behaviours.High emotional intelligence not only enhances organizational citizenship behaviors,but also weakens employees’ counterproductive behaviors and enables employees to suffer less negative effects.In sum,the current research seeks to investigate the relationship between perceived overqualification,job crafting,and knowledge sharing willingness,and to introduce emotional intelligence as a moderating variable in order to provide ideas for research on the positive effects of perceived overqualification.In this study,the questionnaire method was used to distribute questionnaires to employees from multiple provinces,multiple industries,and multiple occupational types.358 valid questionnaires were returned,and the data were subsequently processed and analyzed using SPSS27.0 and AMOS26.0 statistical software.The results show that(1)perceived overqualification has a positive influence on knowledge sharing willingness;(2)perceived overqualification has a positive influence on job crafting;(3)job crafting has a positive influence on knowledge sharing willingness;(4)job crafting plays a mediating role between perceived overqualification and knowledge sharing willingness;(5)Emotional intelligence positively moderates the relationship between perceived overqualification and knowledge sharing willingness.That is,when employees have higher emotional intelligence,the positive influence of perceived overqualification on employees’ knowledge sharing willingness is stronger;when employees have lower emotional intelligence,the positive influence of perceived overqualification on employees’ knowledge sharing willingness is weaker.The findings of this thesis,in light of the above research,may provide some references for management practitioners:(1)Managers should make good use of the potential value to the organization of overqualified employees,build a scientifically sound and efficient incentive mechanism,provide employees with a more challenging platform,appropriately empower them,give timely recognition and incentives so that they have a sense of achievement and initiative in their careers and are effectively motivated to bring their overqualifications into play to help achieve organizational goals.(2)In daily management,managers should advocate and pay attention to team building and focus on creating a harmonious,fair,equal and united organizational culture,so as to weaken the negative perception of overqualified employees and stimulate their good will to share knowledge in a subtle way.(3)Managers should emphasize the role of job crafting,support employees to play a subjective role in their own context and make changes to their work to match their current situation,and also respond positively to employees’ need for structural and social resources to help them overcome obstacles and difficulties and increase their willingness to engage in knowledge-sharing behaviors.(4)Managers should be fully aware of the positive impact of employee personal traits,i.e.,emotional intelligence,in the workplace.Interviewees with high emotional intelligence(often with good emotional management and stress management skills)can be selected and recruited during recruitment.In addition,the organization also needs to strengthen the attention and relief of employees’ emotions,as well as the development of emotion management and stress coping skills.