The Cost of Perceived Overqualification: How Self-Control Depletion and Self-Leadership Shape Nurses’ Negligence Behavior

Background/Objectives: Nurses play a critical role in healthcare delivery, where their behavior can have important consequences for nursing care and patient safety. Despite growing interest in perceived overqualification, the literature remains silent on its relationship with negligence behavior among nurses, and on the mechanisms and factors that may explain or mitigate this relationship. Grounded in the conservation of resources theory (COR) and social cognitive theory, the current research examines the association between perceived overqualification (PO) and negligence behavior, focusing on self-control depletion as a mechanism and self-leadership (SL) as a moderating factor. Methods: Data collected through a structured questionnaire survey of 428 nurses across various hospitals in Nigeria were used to examine these relationships, which were tested using the PROCESS macro. Results: PO is positively related to self-control depletion and negligence behavior. Self-control depletion positively relates to negligence behavior and mediates the direct link between PO and negligence behavior. SL moderated the direct association between PO and negligence behavior, with nurses with higher self-leadership showing weaker positive relationships than those with lower self-leadership. The indirect association through self-control depletion declined at higher SL. Conclusions: Our findings offer new insights into how healthcare organizations can better align nurses’ qualifications with their job responsibilities, and suggest that supporting self-leadership warrants evaluation as a strategy for reducing negligence behavior.