Abstract:

Owing to the economic recession and reduced employment opportunities, overqualification has become a common phenomenon in organizations worldwide (Hu et al., 2015; Zhang et al., 2016) and has attracted wide attention from industry and academia. In the research field of organizational behavior and human resources, scholars focus primarily on the perceived overqualification of employees—that is, individual employees’ subjective feeling that their qualifications surpass the actual needs of job their work. Previous research has shown that perceived overqualification leads to many negative emotional experiences and organizational behaviors in employees, such as reduced job satisfaction and organizational commitment, decreased physical and mental health, increased turnover intention or even actual resignation, increased counterproductive behavior, and reduced organizational citizenship behavior (Harari et al., 2017; Erdogan & Bauer, 2021). However, previous studies have focused primarily on the negative effects of perceived overqualification at the individual level, while the exploration of its potential positive effects have been insufficient. In fact, the perceived overqualification of employees also has a positive effect (Thompson et al., 2013; van Dijk et al ., 2020). In addition, previous studies have neglected to address collective perceived overqualification at the team level (Erdogan & Bauer, 2021; Sierra, 2011; Li et al., 2021). Consequently, this study analyzes and explores the composition and influence of perceived overqualification in the team context by combining the composition approach and compilation approach. The composition approach mainly measures and analyzes the components of perceived overqualification of the team based on the team mean, while the compilation approach mainly measures and analyzes the components of perceived overqualification of the team through team standard deviation. The research for this study focused primarily on three aspects. First, based on social identity theory and the analytical framework of the I-P-O (input–process–output) model, to explored the positive impact and mechanism of the composition of team-perceived overqualification on team work output. Specifically, we explored the positive influence of the aggregate mean of team member’s perceived overqualification through a positive team process on team work output, and the moderating effect of the aggregate standard deviation (team differentiation) of team member’s perceived overqualification on this process. Second, based on social identity theory, we explored the cross-level positive effect and mechanism of the components of team-perceived overqualification on individual work output. To be more specific, we explored the indirect positive influence of the team mean value of team member’s perceived overqualification, and mediating effect of individual team identity, and the boundary effect of team differentiation of team member’s perceived overqualification on the above process. Third, based on the expectation states theory, we explored the positive effect of individual-perceived overqualification on individual work output under the effect of team differentiation of team member’s perceived overqualification. Specifically, we explored the indirectly effects of individual-perceived overqualification on individual work output through informal team status in the condition of team differentiation of perceived overqualification. In summary, this paper is expected to expand the research on perceived overqualification in the team context and to better guide the practice of enterprise management.

Key words: composition of perceived overqualification in the team, individual work output, team work output, differentiation in the team, cross level effect