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...predict perceived overqualification .53) such that individuals in the top 30% of these scores (aggregated) were more than twice as likely to feel overqualified than the rest of the sample. Possible implications for the selection and design of leadership training programs are discussed.
Keywords: leadership training; overqualification; selection
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Overqualification can be defined as a situation of having higher qualification levels than are actually required for a given job. These qualifications are typically measured in terms of educational attainment, experience, and skills (G. J. Johnson & Johnson, 2000; W. R. Johnson, Morrow, & Johnson, 2002) and more recently in terms of general mental ability as well (Fine & Nevo, in press).
Overqualification is considered to be an important component of the broader term of underemployment (Maynard, Joseph, & Maynard, 2006), which refers to any situation of lesser quality employment according to some job standard and may also include dimensions of underpayment, involuntary part-time work, and employment outside of one's professional area (Feldman, 1996). Overqualification has been reported to exist in most industrialized countries, and although the exact number of overqualified workers is not known, under the broader heading of underemployment, conservative estimates indicate that approximately one quarter of the working population is overqualified for their jobs (Feldman & Turnley, 1995; Groot & van den Brink, 2000). Despite its high prevalence, however, the topic of overqualification has received very little attention in the organizational literature, and the psychological antecedents and behavioral consequences of overqualification are still largely unknown. Furthermore, in the absence of appropriate methods for identifying and predicting the performance of overqualified individuals (Feldman, 1996), properly identifying and processing overqualified job applicants has become a major issue in personnel selection today (Institute of Personnel & Development, 1997).
One of the main challenges in studying overqualification in terms of personnel selection has been its operational definition. Although overqualification can be defined objectively, particularly in terms of discrepancies between individual and required educational levels (e.g., Quinn & Mandilovitch, 1975), psychologists have almost exclusively studied overqualification as a perceived construct (G. J. Johnson & Johnson, 1996; W. R. Johnson et al., 2002; Maynard et al., 2006). Perceived overqualification refers to the degree to which individuals perceive themselves (or others) as possessing more than the required job qualifications. It has been argued that this perceived construct is more appropriate for studying the relationship between overqualification and job-related attitudes and performance than objectively defined overqualification (Maynard et al., 2006). However, perceived overqualification is limited in the sense that although it may be a viable measure of overqualification among job incumbents, it cannot, by definition, assess overqualification among new job applicants. Therefore, in terms of personnel selection, a predictive model of overqualification is still very much in need.
Another challenge for studying overqualification in terms of personnel selection is related to its incompatibility with classical selection methods. Classical selection methods involve the administration of valid assessment tools for predicting future training or job performance in terms of the degree to which competency requirements are fulfilled, whereby more is always better (Ghiselli, 1973; Hunter, 1986). However, this traditional approach does not consider maximal competency levels at which individuals possessing too much of a given competency, such as in the case of overqualification, are perhaps unsuitable for their jobs. As a result, job requirements and assessment methods are very seldom set to deselect overqualified individuals (O'Brien, 1986). On the other hand, in practice, studies have found personnel managers to view overqualified job candidates less favorably than adequately qualified candidates, and often do not hire them as a result (Bills, 1992; Maynard & Hakel, 1999). Therefore, there is a need to resolve this discrepancy and to develop reliable selection methods for situations of overqualification.
Overqualifieation and Leadership
This study set out to examine overqualification and selection in a leadership-training scenario. One of the first questions raised was how to measure perceived overqualification in this context. It may be argued that, among the various dimensions of overqualification (i.e., overeducation, overexperience, skill underutilization, and cognitive overqualification), cognitive-based overqualification is a more appropriate construct for studying leadership performance because it is more directly related to general mental ability (GMA), which is considered to be one of the single most effective predictors of successful military and civil training and job performance across occupational categories (Gottfredson, 1997; Schmidt & Hunter, 1998). So too, in both qualitative reviews and meta-analyses of leadership performance, intelligence has been found to be an important and predictive attribute of successful leadership (Bass, 1990; House & Aditya, 1997; Judge, Colbert, & Ilies, 2004; Lord, de Vader, & Alliger, 1986). That intelligence is important for good leadership is also theoretically based on the many leadership performance domains that require high intellectual capacities such as problem solving, planning, communicating, decision making, and creative thinking (Tett, Guterman, Bleier, & Murphy, 2000; Yukl & Van Fleet, 1992).
Once defined in terms of mental ability, a question of interest is whether overqualification in a leadership setting is related to negative attitudes (e.g., dissatisfaction). In other contexts, overqualified individuals are considered to be unchallenged at work and become bored, dissatisfied, and likely to turn over as a result (Bills,...
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