Linking Leader Overqualification to Employee Organizational Citizenship Behaviors Toward the Leader: A Personal Identification Process Model

ABSTRACT Overqualification has important implications not only for the overqualified but also those who work under the overqualified. Leaders are an influential source of self‐identity for followers and employee‐perceived leader overqualification impacts how followers view themselves and behave to the overqualified leader. Perceived leader overqualification, however, has both positive and negative impacts on followers. Yet, research on effects of follower perceived leader overqualification is limited. From an identification construction perspective, and drawing on personal identification (PI) process model, we theorize that perceiving a leader as overqualified can strengthen followers' identification with that leader and, in turn, their organizational citizenship behavior directed toward the leader (OCBL). Because identification depends on how followers construe a leader's attributes in relation to their own self‐concept, we position follower narcissism as a boundary condition. We argue that narcissistic admiration strengthens the positive link between perceived leader overqualification and leader identification, whereas narcissistic rivalry weakens it, producing divergent indirect effects on OCBL. Results from one vignette‐based experiment in the United States and two multi‐wave, multi‐source surveys in China consistently support this moderated‐mediation model. The findings reposition overqualification as a relationally consequential leader attribute and clarify when, and for whom, it elicits rather than undermines supportive follower behavior.