Research on the Influence of Overqualification on Employee Innovation Performance: The Role of Knowledge Sharing and Humble Leadership

Abstract

With the rapid development of China's higher education, the competition for talents has become increasingly fierce, resulting in a large-scale overqualified in the labor market. As a research hotspot emerging in the field of underemployment, the sense of overqualification is still controversial in the academic circles about its positive effect. Based on the theory of self-efficacy perception, this study aims to view overqualification from a positive perspective, build a theoretical model of the relationship between overqualification and employee innovation performance, and reveal the mediating effect of employees' knowledge-sharing behavior and the moderation of humble leadership style's mechanism. Through statistical analysis of the collected data of 301 valid employees, the empirical results show that: the sense of overqualification positively affects the innovation performance of employees; knowledge sharing behavior plays a complete mediating role between the sense of overqualification and innovation performance of employees; the level of humility leadership not only positively regulates the relationship between employees' sense of overqualification and knowledge sharing behaviors, but also further moderates the indirect effect of employees' sense of overqualification affecting their innovation performance through knowledge sharing behaviors. The conclusions of the study help enterprise managers to correctly view the phenomenon of overqualification of employees, and provide suggestions on how managers should guide employees with overqualification to make more positive behaviors, so as to create more value for enterprises.