Research On Influential Mechanism Of Perceived Overqualification And Employee Creativity

Overqualificationrefers to an individual's qualifications,such as education,work experience,knowledgeand skills,are beyond the requirements of theirnormal job.As a special underemployment phenomenon,it is becoming more and more common in organizations,which makes us have to think about its impact on the work of employees.Through reviewing literatures,we can find that most scholars regard overqualification as a kind of "mismatch of person-job" or "waste of talents",so that they think perceived overqualification will lead to some negative work attitudes of employees(such as job dissatisfaction,low organizational commitment,turnover intention),and negative work behaviors(such as counterproduction behavior and withdrawal behavior).In fact,overqualified employees can also dosomething beneficial to their organizationsif they regard their overqualification as a surplus job capacity and have a positive view of their job competence.From this perspective,many scholars are calling for others to study perceived overqualification's potential and positive influences and its influential mechanism.Based on the theoretical and practical background above,and from the perspective that employees will view their overqualifications positively,this study researched the potential and positive results of perceived overqualification,which includeemployees creativity.Drawing onthe theory of self-regulation,we proposed thatperceived overqualification can positively influence their creativity through the mechanism of role breadth self-efficacy,which is a type of cognitive-motivation variables.When employees view their overqualification as surplus knowledge or skills,they will have more confidence in accomplishing a wider range of work activities beyond their job requirements,such as creativity,that is to say,their role breadth self-efficacy will increase.In addition,considering that factors of working environment maybe affect whether employees will view their overqualification positively and how they respond to their overqualification,we also introduced perceived organizational support as a moderator variable to explore its regulating effect in the process thatperceived overqualification affects employee creativity.Using the method of questionnaire survey,we collected 249 valid samples in total,which are from differen enterprises.Then,we used SPSS22.0 software,AMOS21.0 software and Mplus7.4 software to analyze the questionnaire data and test our hypotheses,and we get some main conclusions:(1)Perceived overqualificaiton was positively related to employee creativity;(2)Role breadth self-efficacy had a full mediation effect between perceived overqualificaiton and employee creativity;(3)perceived organizational supportpositively moderated the positive relationship between perceived overqualification and role breadth self-efficacy.That is to say,compared to lower level of perceived organizational support,under higher level of perceived organizational support,the relationship between perceived overqualification and role breadth self-efficacy was stronger;(4)perceived organizational supportpositivelymoderated the indirect relationship between perceived overqualification and creativity of employees.Under higher level of perceived organizational support,the mediating effect of role breadth self-efficacy was stronger than lower level of perceived organizational support.It is a modiated mediation model.Based on the theory ofself-regulation,this study explores the mediation and boundary mechanism of the relationship between perceived overqualifications and employee creativity.It is important to enrich theories of perceived overqualifications and employee creativity.At the same time,this study also puts forward some suggestions on how to manage overqualified employees,which can make uses to managers.Finally,this study points out its deficienciesand hopesfuture researches can overcome.