How Underemployment Benefits: The Curvilinear Mediated Moderation Mechanism of Task Crafting

Abstract

Drawing on job crafting perspective, we theorized an integrative model linking perceived underemployment to three behavioral outcomes, creative performance, organizational citizenship behavior and destructive deviance. Using data collected from two sources (327 teachers and their immediate supervisors) via a three-wave time-lagged research design, we found support to our hypothesis that the joint effect of perceived underemployment and organizational identification on task crafting was curvilinear. When the teachers' organizational identification was high rather than low, they engaged in more task crafting for the organization at intermediate levels of perceived underemployment (an inverted U shape). Further, task crafting in turn positively related to creative performance and organizational citizenship behavior but negatively to organization deviance, indicating a curvilinear mediated moderation mechanism as a whole. Theoretical and practical implications of this study were discussed.