Employee overqualification and promotability : a social network perspective

Abstract

The growing prevalence of overqualification in workplaces has drawn attention to the challenges of qualification–job mismatch. While prior research has extensively documented the negative effects of perceived overqualification on employee attitudes and behaviors, less is known about how overqualified employees resolve this mismatch. This study proposes that promotability serves as a potential solution and explores how overqualified employees navigate their social environments to achieve higher promotability. Integrating the social network perspective with career mobility theory, I argue that overqualified employees engage with advice networks in two distinct ways that differentially affect their promotability. Overqualified employees are more likely to give advice, thereby occupying more central positions in the advice-giving network. This, in turn, enhances promotability by fostering stronger leader–member relationship quality and improving task performance. Conversely, they are less inclined to seek advice, decreasing their centrality in the advice-seeking network. This tendency then undermines promotability by weakening leader–member relationship quality and diminishing task performance. Gender further shapes these paths. Compared with overqualified men, overqualified women face greater barriers in attaining central positions in advice-giving networks, which constrains their promotability. Meanwhile, overqualified women may face less penalties in occupying a central position in the advice-seeking network than overqualified men. To test these hypotheses, I collected multi-wave, multi-source survey data from employees and their leaders across organizations in southern China. Results of multi-level path analyses supported most of the proposed hypotheses, offering nuanced insights into how overqualified employees may leverage or become constrained by workplace social networks in their pursuit of career advancement.