Abstract

In today’s business world, the phenomenon of overqualification is widespread. Organizations need to consider – how to motivate the overqualified employees to utilize their qualifications, for example, promoting creative performance. Based on person-organization fit theory, this study explored when and how employees, who feel overqualified can engage in creative performance. Data were collected from 170 supervisor-subordinate dyads of 41 groups in 10 manufacturing companies across two timepoints in China. Results revealed that perceived overqualification is positively related to organizational identification when employee development-oriented organizational culture is strong but negatively related to organizational identification when employee development-oriented organizational culture is weak, organizational identification is positively related to creative performance, the indirect relationship between perceived overqualification and creative performance via organizational identification is moderated by employee development-oriented organizational culture. We provide several theoretical contributions to the overqualification literature and make some suggestions to motivate the overqualified employees to use their surplus qualifications within the organizations.