When high work engagement is negative for family tasks: mechanisms and boundary conditions

Background

Typically, work engagement is positively related to beneficial job outcomes. Earlier studies, however, revealed a "dark side" of work engagement showing negative effects such as more work-family conflict. Using a resource perspective, our study seeks to better understand why and when these negative effects of work engagement occur. Specifically, we test a new model in which the relationship of work engagement with work-family conflict is mediated by organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and work rumination. Moreover, we argue that employees' resource-building strategies (i.e., job crafting) and resource levels (i.e., psychological capital) buffer resource depletion due to high work engagement.

Methods

We tested our assumptions in a field study that involved data collected on three measurement points with 523 employees from Nigeria. The measures consist of Utrecht Work Engagement Scale, Organizational Citizenship Behavior Scale, Work Rumination Scale, Psychological Capital Scale, Job Crafting Measure, Work-family Conflict Scale, and demographic variables. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was used to test the hypotheses.

Results and discussion

Results from latent structure equation modelling confirm that work rumination mediates the positive relationship between work engagement and work-family conflict. Additionally, our findings suggest that behavioral engagement (i.e.,OCB) and work rumination mediate the relationship between work engagement and work-family conflict. Moreover, psychological capital mitigated the relationships of work engagement with work rumination, but not job crafting. Our study helps to better understand the "dark side" of work engagement and offers implications on how to mitigate its detrimental relationship with work-family conflict.

Perceived overqualification as a double-edged sword for employee creativity: The mediating role of job crafting and work withdrawal behavior

With the continuous development of education level and the downturn of economic situation, employment competition is intensifying, more and more high-quality talents appear, and the misfit between people and posts has become a common phenomenon. However, there is no consensus on the relationship between perceived overqualification and employee creativity. Based on the conservation of resource theory, this study reveals the micro mechanism and boundary conditions of the influence of excessive qualification on employee creativity. This study analyzed 487 valid samples obtained in three stages. The results show that: (1) Job crafting has a positive mediating effect on perceived overqualification and creativity, and the path of the two halves is positive; (2) Work withdrawal behavior plays a negative mediating role between the perceived overqualification and creativity. The path in the first half is positive, and the path in the second half is negative; (3) Organizational identity moderates the effect of perceived overqualification on job crafting and work withdrawal behavior. Specifically, the higher the sense of organizational identification, the stronger the positive effect of perceived overqualification on job crafting and the weaker the positive effect on work withdrawal behavior; (4) Organizational identification moderates the mediating role of job crafting and work withdrawal behavior in the relationship between overqualification and creativity. Specifically, the higher the organizational identity, the stronger the indirect positive effect of perceived overqualification on creativity through job crafting, and the weaker the indirect negative impact of perceived overqualification on creativity through work withdrawal behavior. The study conclusion deepens the research on the mechanism of the influence of the perceived overqualification on employees' work behavior, and provides practical enlightenment for the organization and management of employees with excess qualification.

Unveiling the nexus between perceived overqualification and knowledge hiding: Moderated mediation analysis of job crafting and job boredom

Purpose

Grounding on relative deprivation theory, this study aimed to investigate the relationship between perceived overqualification (POQ) and knowledge hiding. Furthermore, this study investigated the mediating role of job boredom and the moderating effect of job crafting.

Design

/Methodology/Approach: This study employs Hayes' PROCESS model to analyze data obtained from 374 employees working in the hospitality and tourism industry.

Findings

The results indicate a positive relationship between POQ, job boredom, and knowledge hiding. These findings suggest that job boredom mediates the relationship between POQ and knowledge hiding. Furthermore, the study showed a moderated mediation path wherein the interaction effect of POQ and job crafting on knowledge hiding was mediated by job boredom.

Research limitations/implications

Data were collected from the hospitality and tourism industry, limiting the generalizability of the findings to other sectors. Additionally, the study relied on self-reported measures, which may have resulted in a bias.

Practical implications

Conduct thorough job fit assessments during the hiring process to ensure that candidates' qualifications align closely with job requirements. By matching employees' skills and experiences to their job, organizations can reduce perceived overqualification, which may lower job boredom and knowledge hiding tendencies.

Originality/value

This study's focus on person-job misfits adds a new layer of insight into employee experiences in the workplace. By examining how mismatches between individuals and their roles contribute to job boredom and knowledge hiding, this study highlights the importance of aligning job responsibilities with employee skills, qualifications, and preferences.

Cross Culture Examination of Perceived Overqualification, Psychological Well-Being and Job Search: The Moderating Role of Proactive Behavior

Purpose

This study delves into the intricate interplay between perceived overqualification, job search behavior, psychological well-being, and proactive behavior, within two distinct and diverse work settings.

Methods

Drawing upon the Person-Job Fit theory, we investigated these dynamics in two unique samples: Sample 1 encompassed corporate sector employees in the United Arab Emirates (N=409), while Sample 2 comprised IT sector workers in Pakistan (N=337). Hayes PROCESS macro were used to examine the proposed hypotheses and AMOS (Version 28) were conducted to examine model fitness.

Results

In Study 1, we established a positive association between perceived overqualification and job search behavior among employees in the UAE corporate sector. Notably, this relationship was mediated by psychological well-being, suggesting that the impact of perceived overqualification on job search behavior is, in part, channeled through its effects on individuals' psychological well-being. Study 2 showed that proactive behavior exhibited a moderating effect on the negative link between perceived overqualification and psychological well-being. Specifically, employees displaying higher levels of proactive behavior demonstrated a less adverse influence of perceived overqualification on psychological well-being. Importantly, this adaptive effect of proactive behavior was found to indirectly influence job search behavior.

Discussion

The findings highlight the nature of perceived overqualification in the workplace and its varying impact on employee behavior and well-being across different cultural and work settings. The mediation by psychological well-being and moderation by proactive behavior in these relationships underscores the importance of individual responses to perceived job fit issues. These insights are crucial for understanding employee behavior in diverse work environments and can inform practices for managing perceived overqualification.

Environmentally Specific Servant Leadership and Brand Citizenship Behavior: The Role of Green-Crafting Behavior and Employee-Perceived Meaningful Work

Sustainability and environmental concerns have become increasingly important in the business world, with organizations seeking to integrate sustainable practices and enhance their brand citizenship behavior. Servant leadership that is focused on the environment is a type of leadership approach that gives prominence to preserving and promoting environmental sustainability. This study aims to examine the impact of environmentally specific servant leadership on brand citizenship behavior, with a focus on the mediating roles of green-crafting behavior and employee-identified meaningful work. Drawing on data from a survey of 319 employees working in hotels, this study conducted partial least square-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to test a dual-moderated mediation model to explore the direct and indirect effects of environmentally specific servant leadership on brand citizenship behavior. The results of this study reveal that environmentally specific servant leadership has a significant and positive impact on green-crafting behavior and employee meaningful work. Moreover, green-crafting behavior and employee-perceived meaningful work both mediate the link between environmentally specific servant leadership and brand citizenship behavior. Specifically, green-crafting behavior acts as a mediator between environmentally specific servant leadership and employee-perceived meaningful work, while employee-perceived meaningful work mediates the link between green-crafting behavior and brand citizenship behavior. These findings have important implications for managers and organizations that seek to enhance their sustainability and brand citizenship behavior. Specifically, this study highlights the critical role of environmentally specific servant leadership (ESSL) in promoting green-crafting behavior and employee-perceived meaningful work, which in turn influence brand citizenship behavior. Therefore, organizations can improve their brand citizenship performance by developing ESSL behaviors and practices that foster green-crafting behavior and employee-perceived meaningful work.

How COVID-19 Perceived Risk Causes Turnover Intention Among Chinese Flight Attendants: A Moderated Mediation Model

Purpose

This study examined the influencing mechanism and boundary conditions underlying the relation between COVID-19 perceived risk and flight attendants' turnover intention by investigating the mediating role of job insecurity and the moderating effect of job crafting.

Methods

 A two-wave survey was conducted with 240 Chinese flight attendants. We used structural equation modeling to test the moderated mediation model.

Results

The results indicated that perceived risk of COVID-19 positively affected flight attendants' job insecurity and turnover intention. Moreover, job insecurity plays a fully mediating role in the relationship between perceived risk and turnover intention. Furthermore, the mediating role of job insecurity was moderated by job crafting; for higher levels of job crafting (opposed to low), the effect of job insecurity on turnover intention was significantly weaker.

Conclusion

 Our findings indicate that dissipating job insecurity and increasing job crafting behavior are critical to employees' work-related attitudes and behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Organisational support and teachers’ performance: The moderating role of job crafting

Orientation: Teachers fulfil an essential role in students’ learning and the prosperity of nations. Hence, teacher performance, and the determinants thereof, are vital to understand.Research purpose: To extend the conversation on teacher performance in a non-WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialised and democratic) nation, the authors aimed to investigate potential factors that may influence teachers’ performance, specifically from the perspective of perceived organisational support (POS) and job crafting.Motivation for the study: Due to the widespread impact of teacher performance and the potential of both POS and job crafting to enable it, it is valuable to investigate the collective effect of these variables on individual work performance.Research approach/design and method: This quantitative cross-sectional study involved 207 teachers conveniently sampled from private educational organisations in Gauteng. The Survey of Perceived Organisational Support, Job Crafting Questionnaire and an Individual Work Performance Subscale were administered to assess the study variables. Structural equation modelling was employed to confirm the dimensionality of the scales, followed by moderation analysis for hypothesis testing.Main findings: The results of the moderation analysis showed that the effect of POS on teachers’ performance is conditional upon teachers’ job crafting behaviours in the organisation. More specifically, organisational support matters for teachers’ performance but only for those with low to moderate levels of job crafting.Practical/managerial implications: Organisations could implement interventions to enhance teachers’ perceptions of support from the organisation to improve their performance. Simultaneously, organisations can invest in interventions that teach teachers to craft their jobs and create organisational environments that foster job crafting behaviours.Contribution/value-add: The study contributes to the limited body of literature on teachers’ performance in a developing context and literature on organisational support and job crafting.

Do overqualified employees hide knowledge? The mediating role of psychological contract breach

Although the negative effects of a sense of overqualification on organizations and individuals have been examined, it is debatable whether overqualified employees hide knowledge. Relying on the social comparison theory and psychological contract theory, this paper tried to investigate the non-linear relationship between perceived overqualification and knowledge hiding via psychological contract breach by surveying employees with bachelor’s degrees or above and eventually recruited 475 participants. The results indicated that psychological contract breach acts a partial mediating role in the inverted U-shaped relationship between perceived overqualification and knowledge hiding, while leader-member exchange acts as a moderator. The finding manifests that overqualification encourages employees to hide knowledge, but their possibly vigorous aspects will be displayed when a certain limit is exceeded. This study benefits organizations by advising them to dialectically treat and properly place overqualified employees and contributes to the research on overqualified employees’ knowledge management by offering a new explanation and complete understanding of perceived overqualification and knowledge hiding, with specific focus given to the psychological states of employees.

Person–Job Misfit: Perceived Overqualification and Counterproductive Work Behavior

Grounding on person–job fit theory, we examined perceived overqualification relation with counterproductive work behavior (CWB) by identifying job boredom as a mediator and job crafting as a moderator. Hierarchical linear regression and Hayes’ PROCESS macro-method were used to assess hypotheses in a three-wave survey of 317 textile sector employees. The findings show that perceived overqualification is positively related with CWBs. This study further examined the mediating function of job boredom and the moderating impact of job crafting in the association between perceived overqualification and CWB. The findings suggest that job crafting moderates the positive relation between perceived overqualification and job boredom and the indirect connection between perceived overqualification and CWB via job boredom. The model was tested using 3-wave data; however, since the data were attained from a single source, questions of common method bias cannot be ruled out. Managers should look for changes in employee attitudes and promptly modify employees’ positions when they indicate that they have more experience, abilities, and talents required for their roles in their organizations.

Job crafting, meaningful work and performance: a moderated mediation approach of presenteeism

This study aimed to (1) analyze the relationship between the three job crafting dimensions (task, cognitive and relational crafting) and performance; (2) explore whether meaningful work fully mediates the links between the three job crafting dimensions and performance; (3) analyze if presenteeism moderates the indirect effect of meaningful work in the relationship between job crafting and performance. To achieve these goals, we collected data with 146 workers from a town hall. We analyzed the proposed moderated-mediation model using the PROCESS macro. The results showed that (1) the meaning in work mediated the relationship between the three job crafting dimensions and performance; (2) presenteeism moderated the mediated relationship between job crafting and performance via meaningful work, that is, lower levels of presenteeism were positively related to performance, in particular, when the levels of meaning in work were lower. These results show the importance of empowering employees to craft their work, as it appears to increase employees' performance, by enhancing the meaning attributed to the work. Promoting health conditions, at work, also seems to be relevant for performance once it may decrease levels of presenteeism. The cross-sectional design should be regarded as a limitation, and we assessed all the variables through self-reported measures. The present study contributes to the literature by analyzing the relationship of job crafting to performance via meaningful work, within the public administration context. Moreover, this study adds to the literature the conditional effect of presenteeism which has not been discussed in prior studies. This study aids in bridging this gap.

Perceived Overqualification and Intensive Smartphone Use: A Moderated Mediation Model

Previous studies only considered the impact of personal or environmental factors on intensive smartphone use separately, while largely ignoring the impact of person-environment (P-E) fit on it. Drawing on the P-E fit theory, we proposed that perceived overqualification (POQ), an indicator of person-job misfit, positively affects intensive smartphone use via job boredom, and affective commitment moderates this indirect effect. We examined our hypotheses using four-wave time-lag data of 450 workers from 62 teams. The results revealed that POQ raised job boredom of an individual and thus increased their intensive smartphone use. In addition, when the affective commitment was high, the indirect effect from POQ to intensive smartphone use via job boredom was weaker. The implications, limitations, and future directions of this research were discussed.

Distributed Leadership and New Generation Employees' Proactive Behavior: Roles of Idiosyncratic Deals and Meaningfulness of Work

New generation employees have become the main force of the organization, and their proactive behavior directly affects the organization’s future development. How to effectively stimulate the proactive behavior of new generation employees has become a hot topic in the field of organizational management. Based on the integrated perspective of social exchange and self-enhancement, we constructed a multistep mediation model to explore the influence mechanism of distributed leadership on the proactive behavior of new generation employees. We designed a three-stage research method of supervisor-employee pairing to collect data from 26 supervisors and 304 new generation employees in a new energy vehicle company in East China. Results indicated that (a) distributed leadership is positively related to proactive behavior of new generation employees; (b) idiosyncratic deals and meaningfulness of work mediated the linkage between distributed leadership and new generation employees’ proactive behavior; (c) idiosyncratic deals and meaningfulness of work play a multistep mediation role between distributed leadership and new generation employees’ proactive behavior. These findings have theoretical implications for the proactive behavior literature and managerial implications for practitioners.

Interest Incongruence and Job Performance: Examining the Moderating Roles of Job Crafting and Positive Affect

Interest incongruence between employees and work environments has been considered as an adverse working condition; however, the way employees cope with it has rarely been explored. Using the conservation of resources theory, the appraisal theory, and the broaden-and-build theory, this study aims to investigate the moderating roles of job crafting and trait positive affect, separately and interactively, in the relationship between interest incongruence and job performance. Data collected from 384 Chinese employees and their colleagues across two time periods supported our hypotheses. Specifically, findings indicated that the relationship between interest incongruence and job performance was weakened when employees were more engaged in job crafting, or for employees with high positive affect. More importantly, a three-way interaction suggested that the detrimental impact of interest incongruence on job performance was especially mitigated when both job crafting and positive affect were high. Future studies should consider the combined roles of employees’ proactive behaviors and trait affectivity in improving job performance.

Are overqualified individuals hiding knowledge: the mediating role of negative emotion state

Purpose

Despite manager’s investments in facilitating knowledge sharing, such as hiring employees with lots of knowledge, knowledge hiding remains prevalent in organizations. It may stem from that less attention has been paid to the relationship between perceived overqualification and knowledge hiding. Drawing on emotion theory, this study aims to build a mediation framework to examine effects of perceived overqualification on knowledge hiding via negative emotion state and moderating role of team positive affective tone.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper uses a two-wave survey study among 398 knowledge workers from 106 teams in knowledge-intensive industries and tests the hypotheses by performing a series of hierarchical linear modeling analyzes.

Findings

The results show that a negative emotion state mediates the U-shaped relationship between employees’ perceived overqualification and knowledge hiding behavior. Team positive affective tone moderates the U-shaped relationship between negative emotions and employees’ knowledge hiding behavior.

Originality/value

This study extends current knowledge management literature by introducing perceived overqualification as an individual predictor of employees’ knowledge hiding behavior and revealing the both light and dark sides of perceived overqualification on knowledge hiding, as well as its intervening mechanism. The research findings help practitioners to curb such counterproductive behaviors.

Job resources and employees' intention to stay: the mediating role of meaningful work and work engagement

Based on the Job Demands Resources Model (JD-R), this study investigates the mediating role of meaningful work and work engagement in the association between job resources and employees' intention to stay. A cross-sectional study was conducted through an online survey of 217 employees from different organizations in Puerto Rico. We examined a serial mediation analysis through structural equation modeling. The results indicate that job resources are positively related to meaningful work, while meaningful work is positively associated with work engagement. Further, job resources are indirectly associated with the intention to stay through meaningful work and work engagement. This study contributes to understanding the role of meaningful work and engagement in the JD-R model's motivational-driven process and how these mechanisms promote positive work outcomes in terms of the retention of human capital. Designing jobs and strategies at the workplace to develop meaning and engagement seems crucial to retain employees.

Perceived Overqualification and Job Crafting: The Curvilinear Moderation of Career Adaptability

Developments in direct and indirect educational systems have increased the number of individuals with competencies that are higher than the required expectations of their current jobs. This concept of overqualification is drawing interest today, while underqualification was the focus in the past. Currently, research on perceived overqualification (POQ) has focused on its negative influences; however, this study aimed to explore the positive and nonlinear influence of POQ on job crafting and the moderating effect of career adaptability on these functions. Data were collected from 257 individuals in three Korean telecom companies. The results of hierarchical regression analysis indicate that POQ had a reverse U-shaped nonlinear influence on job crafting, indicating that an appropriate level of POQ can drive job crafting, leading to performance improvements in organizations and individuals. Moreover, career adaptability moderated the relationship between POQ and job crafting. When career adaptability was at an average or high level, the reverse U-shaped nonlinear influence of POQ on job crafting strengthened. These results are expected to assist in creating both an environment to reduce the negative influence of POQ and healthy sustainability in human resources development.