This research explores two concepts related to employee retention. The first concerns turnover intention, which is the employee's willingness to leave the organization. The second concept pertains to specific actions aimed at finding a new job. Two types of such job search behaviors are considered in the study: browsing job offers in the press and on the Internet, and applying for a new job.
In the first stage of the study, I try to answer the question of how overqualification leads to retention. Based on previous research on overqualification and with the application of P-J fit theory and Organizational justice theory as a theoretical framework, I suggest, with regard to the relationship between perceived overqualification and turnover intention, that (1) perceived overqualification will be positively associated with turnover intention, (2) this relationship will be entirely mediated through organizational commitment, (3) this indirect effect will be moderated by interpersonal justice and pay satisfaction. With respect to the relationship between perceived overqualification and job search behavior, I argue, that (1) perceived overqualification will be positively associated with the browsing of job offers in the press and on the Internet, (2) this relationship will be entirely mediated through organizational commitment, (3) perceived overqualification will directly affect applying for a new job, 4) this direct effect will be moderated by interpersonal justice and pay satisfaction. Given the significant role of organizational commitment, as a mediator, in the second stage of the study I test whether using different non-salary job attributes it is possible to reinforce organizational commitment and thus mitigate the negative effects of overqualification on retention. Finally, to validate if the obtained results are robust, I test whether the negative affectivity (pessimism) has a significant impact on both the perception of overqualification and on the overqualification effects.
The starting point for this study is the relationship between overqualification and retention. Literature on overqualification provides a number of consistent results indicating a positive relationship between perceived overqualification and turnover intentions. Among the researchers who confirm that overqualification contributes to a stronger intention to leave the organization are Burris [16], Bolino and Feldman [13], Wald [105], Maynard et al. [74], McGuinness and Wooden [76]. A number of empirical studies also confirmed that overqualification was associated with active job search behavior [30, 31, 72, 105].
Although there is robust empirical evidence on the how overqualification and retention are related and all studies show a negative link, there are no unequivocal results in the literature that would confirm the nature of this relationship, i.e., that POQ directly affects turnover intention or that the POQ effect is indirect through a mediator. This raises the question of what kind of mediator could transmit the effect of overqualification on retention. According to the meta-analysis by Harari et al. [39], the POQ affects turnover intention both directly and through organizational commitment. In classic models of turnover [71], organizational commitment is the key factor affecting the withdrawal process. These models also often indicate that low commitment stems from job characteristics such as low opportunity for promotion, low autonomy and a high degree of routinization, which ultimately end in the employee searching for a new job [86–88]. Precisely these job characteristics are associated with overqualification. A dissatisfaction with one’s current job and, consequently, with the organization in which an employee works, prompts him or her to look for a more suitable job. A poor rating of an organization leads to a low organizational commitment. This happens very often to overqualified people. Organizational commitment is also an important mediator in more recent models of turnover [58, 68]. Ahuja et al. [3] even shows that organizational commitment is the strongest predictor of employee turnover intention. Based on the findings in the turnover literature, this research concentrates on organizational commitment, and more precisely on affective commitment as a mediator of the relationship between perceived overqualification and retention.
Organizational commitment is a bond that develops between an employee and his or her organization. High organizational commitment encourages the employee to engage more deeply in the work, makes him or her loyal to the employer and makes the employee share the values that guide the organization [93]. Research on organizational commitment often focuses on its three dimensions: the employee’s emotional attachment to his or her organization (the affective dimension), the perceived costs of quitting (the continuance dimension), and one’s feeling the he or she has an obligation to stay with the organization (the normative dimension for details see Allen and Meyer, [4]. A review of the theoretical and empirical literature on organizational commitment convinced Mercurio [77] to conclude that emotional, or affective commitment is the core essence of organizational commitment.
These three dimensions of organizational commitment tell us that employees stay with the organization because they want to, need to, or ought to. This research concentrates only on the affective organizational commitment (AOC) that occurs when an employee wishes to continue working in an organization, identifies with it, and desires to remain a part of it. The employee becomes committed to an organization because he or she "wants to." This focus on the affective organizational commitment is a consequence of the second research objective, i.e., the comparison between the mediation effects of salary and non-salary job attributes (nonwage benefits, flexible working hours, and procedural justice) in the relationship between POQ and the employee’s attachment to his or her organization. The results of the study are expected to answer the question: If offered non-salary job attributes, will overqualified employees want to stay with the organization?
The affective organizational commitment (AOC) plays an important role in explaining the impact of perceived overqualification on retention because AOC, on the one hand, is a crucial outcome of perceived overqualification and on the other, is an essential factor that affects turnover intention and job search behavior. Based on their meta-analysis of perceived overqualification Harari et al. [39] indicate that AOC is one of the most studied outcomes of perceived overqualification and, what is important, these studies show relatively consistent results. Overqualification is related to low affective organizational commitment. Feldman et al. [30] and Maynard et al. [74], and Maynard and Joseph [73] demonstrate the negative correlation between POQ and AOC. A review of empirical studies also confirms a significant relationship between AOC and retention. The findings of an analysis of multiple studies conducted by Cooper-Hakin and Viswesvaran [21] revealed that affective organizational commitment is negatively correlated with turnover (ρ = − 0.20). Lin and Chen [60] and Wu and Polsaram [107] as well as Cave et al. [19] also show a negative relationship between AOC and employee’s turnover intentions. Somers [99] indicates AOC as a predictor of job search behavior.
When examining affective organizational commitment as a mediator in the relationship between perceived overqualification and turnover intention it is important to determine whether POQ affects turnover intention entirely or partly through organizational commitment. If the effect of POQ was entirely mediated by organizational commitment, then its reinforcement through job attributes would more effectively prevent overqualified employees from leaving the organization.
Thus, I hypothesize that the mechanism through which POQ affects turnover intention is as follows:
H1
The relationship between perceived overqualification and turnover intention is entirely mediated through organizational commitment.
The first stage of research related to the relationship between POQ and turnover intention will be completed by validating two hypothesis on the moderating roles of interpersonal justice and pay satisfaction. I argue that overqualified employees, despite a weak fit with their job, may still feel they are valuable members of the team if they have a sense of belonging to the organization. Overqualified employees can be expected to be alert to signals about their position in the group they work for. One of the strongest status signals is fairness [102]. Employees who are treated with respect by their superiors have a sense of worth and their co-workers appreciate their position in the team. Deng et al. [24] shows that interpersonal influence is a moderator which makes employees less sensitive to the negative effects of perceived overqualification. In their synthesis of the literature on overqualification, Erdogan and Bauer [25] conclude that because of feelings of deprivation, overqualified employees may isolate themselves from their co-workers. As a result of this distancing, they do not use their higher qualifications or opportunities to help other co-workers. Based on their research on the nature of the relationship between overqualification and social network centrality, Erdogan et al. [29] indicate the possibility to alleviate this tendency. The overqualified employees need to feel that they are part of the team. They must be treated with respect by their superiors. Interpersonal justice, i.e., the respect of their superiors, [11, 38] positively influences relations between employees who feel treated with respect. They identify with their team and they are committed to their organization [5]s. In their review of empirical work on factors of turnover intention, Belete [8] show the results of studies that confirm an inverse and significant relationship between interactional justice and turnover intention [2, 84, 98]. He also cites the publication by Kwai et al. [57], who found that higher organizational justice tends not only to reduce turnover intention but also to increase organizational commitment.
Based on the studies presented in the literature, I argue that interpersonal justice should weaken the effect of POQ on the turnover intention. This will be checked by validating the hypothesis:
H2
The relationship between perceived overqualification and turnover intention is moderated by interpersonal justice.
In order to see which of the two moderators, interpersonal justice or pay satisfaction, has a greater effect on lessening the negative impact of POQ on turnover intention, in addition to hypothesis 2, hypothesis 2a for pay satisfaction will be validated:
H2a
The relationship between perceived overqualification and turnover intention is moderated by pay satisfaction.
The inclusion of pay satisfaction, as a moderator, in this study is dictated by the conclusive results presented in the literature, indicating a significant and negative relationship between pay level and turnover intention (for example [40, 56]). If pay satisfaction proves to be a weaker moderator than interpersonal justice, it will mean that an organization which wants to retain overqualified employees but cannot offer higher salaries, should place special emphasis on treating such employees fairly.
Figure 1 presents the mechanism through which POQ affects turnover intention with organizational commitment acting as a mediator and interpersonal justice or pay satisfaction as a moderator.
In developing the first stage of the current study, I focus on the relationship between overqualification and job search behavior. Previous studies related to job search have failed to address the relationship between POQ and behaviors aimed at finding a job[48]. Research has mostly focused on the influence of perceived overqualification on employee turnover [26, 63, 76]. Maynard and Parfyonova [72] expanded this investigation to include the relationship between perceived overqualification and withdrawal with consideration of active job search behavior. Their study was the first to examine affective commitment—as a potential mediator of the relationship between perceived overqualification and job search behavior. They found that affective commitment was a non-significant mediator. I suppose this lack of significance for the overall indirect effect of affective commitment may have been caused by how the job search measure was constructed. Maynard and Parfyonova [72]-based their research on a 6-item measure proposed by Blau [12]. As a result, they received an aggregate measure that included answers to questions about completing an application and sending a CV to potential employers. Such an aggregate measure did not reflect how serious these intentions of leaving the job were. I suspect that affective commitment plays a mediating role in the initial stage of searching for a new job. An overqualified employee does not feel an emotional connection to the organization and starts thinking about changing jobs. His or her first move is to browse job listings in the press and on the Internet. Thus, I hypothesize the mechanism through which POQ affects browsing job offers:
H3
The relationship between POQ and browsing job offers in the press and the Internet is fully mediated through organizational commitment.
Hypothesis 3 is illustrated in Fig. 2.
If organizational commitment proves to be a significant mediator, then the strengthening of the emotional connection between overqualified employees and the organization could help prevent such employees from seeking new job offers.
With regard to advanced job search, which is submitting an application for a new job, I suspect that organizational commitment is not a mediator. This is because if an overqualified employee eventually decides to apply for a new job, the main motivation for such an action is the belief his or her educational and professional experiences are not fully utilized. I therefore believe that the effect of POQ on applying for a new job is direct. It will be interesting to see if this direct effect can be weakened by improving the relations between superiors and employees or salary satisfaction. Thus, I hypothesize the mechanism through which POQ affects applying for a new job:
H4
The direct relationship between POQ and applying for a new job is moderated by interpersonal justice.
H5
The direct relationship between POQ and applying for a new job is moderated by pay satisfaction.
Figure 3 illustrates both hypotheses.
In the second part of this study, I look for answers to questions about how to strengthen the affective commitment through non-salary job attributes and pay satisfaction. If the relationships between perceived overqualification and turnover intention as well as browsing job offers are entirely mediated through organizational commitment, it can be assumed that it is possible to weaken the impact of POQ on turnover intention by strengthening the organizational commitment of overqualified employees. To this end, one can use non-salary job attributes (such as nonwage benefits and the elasticity of work hours) and pay satisfaction as well as improve fairness at the workplace. However, these job attributes can help to reduce retention only if they transmit the effect of perceived overqualification on affective commitment, i.e., if they are significant mediators. The results presented in the literature suggest that this idea can be validated in the current study.
Based on the model of effort-reward imbalance developed by medical sociologist Siegrist [97], I suspect that salary and nonwage benefits, such as healthcare package, sports tickets, etc., could reduce this type of imbalance experienced by overqualified employees. A mismatch between high effort spent at work and low gain received in turn makes overqualified employees feel negative emotions of reward frustration, which in turn causes job stress, which leads to a decrease in affective commitment. The negative effect of job stress on affective commitment was confirmed, for instance, by McLean and Andrew [75], Kaur [51], Yukongdi and Shrestha [110]. Job stress is one of the major organizational factors that increase turnover intention [6, 79, 40, 467].
The idea that elasticity of work hours could be used to reinforce affective commitment is based on the conservation of resources theory, developed by Hobfoll [42]. This theory states that people experience stress when they can't maintain or acquire resources that are important to them. Liu and Xi [64] showed that overqualified employees will feel stress at work because they cannot fully utilize two resources that are important to them, knowledge and time. If offered elasticity of work hours they would have more control over their work and consequently strengthen their affective commitment and weaken turnover intention.
Another potential mediator of the effect of perceived overqualification on affective commitment could be clear rules for promotion or organizational justice. Organizational justice theory indicates that overqualified personnel is inclined to perceive their working conditions as unfair [1]. Thus, reinforced procedural justice appropriateness in decision-making procedures, including promotion rules, [59, 100] could stop them from leaving their current job. This idea is supported by the results presented in the literature. Iyigun and Tamer [45] as well as Phayoonpu and Mat [85] showed the negative and statistically significant association between procedural justice and turnover intention. Also, in research conducted by Kwai et al. [57] procedural justice proved to be an important factor that increased organizational commitment and decreased turnover intention. The importance of procedural justice, primarily concerned with rules of promotion, is indirectly demonstrated by research results obtained by Maynard and Parfyonova [72]. They show that competence and growth value was a significant moderator for the impact of perceived overqualification on affective commitment and active job search behavior. Clear promotion procedures are important for career advancement, as research into the nature of the relationship between overqualification and career success shows that this relationship is negative [28, 36, 105]. If overqualified employees are convinced that promotion in their organization depends on appropriate qualifications, they will see opportunities for career advancement and feel more committed to the organization and consequently will be more likely to continue working there.
To answer the question whether non-salary work attributes could be used to strengthen organizational commitment and, consequently, to prevent overqualified employees from leaving their jobs, the hypotheses regarding the mediators of the relationship between POQ and organizational commitment will be verified (hypotheses 6–8). Additionally, the hypothesis about pay satisfaction as a mediator will also be tested (H9).
H6
The relationship between perceived overqualification and organizational commitment is entirely mediated through nonwage benefits.
H7
The relationship between perceived overqualification and organizational commitment is entirely mediated through the elasticity of work hours.
H8
The relationship between perceived overqualification and organizational commitment is entirely mediated through procedural justice.
H9
The relationship between perceived overqualification and organizational commitment is entirely mediated through pay satisfaction.
A conceptual mediation model for the relationship between perceived overqualification and organizational commitment is presented in Fig. 4.
Finally, in the third stage of this study, if negative affectivity turns out not to be a significant moderator of POQ effects, then the results regarding the mechanisms through which POQ influences turnover intentions and job search behaviors will be considered robust. Thus, I hypothesize:
H10
Negative affectivity (pessimism) is not a relevant moderator in the POQ-Turnover intention relationship and the POQ-Organizational commitment relationship.
A positive validation of H10 would mean that the relationships between POQ and Turnover intention and between POQ and Organizational commitment are not spurious, i.e., they are not due to the fact that the variables in these relationships are correlated with the "third" variable, which is Negative affectivity. H10 validation is a test that checks the robustness of the results obtained from the mediation models.