Perceived overqualification, felt organizational obligation, and extra-role behavior during the COVID-19 crisis: the moderating role of self-sacrificial leadership

Chia Huei Wu, Hannah Weisman, Li Kuo Sung, Berrin Erdogan and Talya N. Bauer

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Past research has found that employees who view themselves as overqualified for their jobs tend to hold negative job attitudes and be unwilling to go beyond the call of duty. In challenging situations such as during the COVID-19 crisis, when having “all hands-on deck” may be important to an organization's survival, mitigating the negative tendencies of these employees becomes important. Adopting a sensemaking perspective on crisis management, we examine whether supervisors' self-sacrificial leadership can mitigate these negative tendencies. First, we propose that employee perceived overqualification is associated with lower levels of felt obligation to the organization and thereby lower levels of extra-role behaviors (i.e., helping and proactivity). We next propose that supervisors' self-sacrificial leadership during the COVID-19 crisis can evoke, especially when COVID-19 more strongly impacts the organization, a sense of collectivism toward the organization, which mitigates the negative association of perceived overqualification with felt obligation and thus extra-role behaviors. We tested our theorizing in samples from the UK (n = 121, pilot study) and US (n = 382, main study) in studies with a multi-wave, time-lagged design. Findings from both studies provide support for our theorizing. We discuss implications for research and practice concerning perceived overqualification during a crisis.

Keywords: Covid-19; crisis; extra-role behavior; perceived overqualification; self-sacrificial leadership; coronavirus (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2022-07-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published in Applied Psychology, 1, July, 2022, 71(3), pp. 983 - 1013. ISSN: 0269-994X

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