Challenger But Not Follower? The Chain Effect of Leaders’ Perceived Team Overqualification

Despite the prevalence of employee overqualification in the workplace, most extant research has focused on the incumbent’s perceptions and the effect of these perceptions on themselves or peers, paying little attention to leaders’ perceptions of team members’ overqualification and then their psychological and behavioral reactions. The present study serves to fill in this gap based on 73 leaders and 286 employees from a steel company corporate in southern China. Drawing on social cognitive theory, the study found that leader perceived team overqualification was negatively related to leadership efficacy, and the reduced leadership efficacy would then hinder team performance via limiting leader empowering behavior. In addition, leader social face consciousness strengthened the negative effect of leader perceived team overqualification on leadership efficacy, which in turn, strengthened the indirect negative effect of leader perceived team overqualification on team performance through leadership efficacy and leader empowering behavior. The study contributes to the overqualification literature by considering the perspective of leaders, which allows us to reveal how leaders would respond to overqualified employees.