Turnover Intention Among Overqualified Employees: A Multi Group Analysis And Its Implications

Abstract

This study highlights the effect of perceived overqualification on turnover intention in an emerging economy context characterized by oversupply of graduates. The intention here was to examine whether the contextual factors affect the relationships under study. The mediating role of employee wellbeing and person environment fit is examined in this relationship under two different working environments. This was done to examine whether a perceived fit with the working environment enable an employee to experience wellbeing and thereby weaken the turnover intention. A multi group invariance test was conducted to study whether the organization type and any of the objective variables under study influence these relationships. The analysis was conducted using structural equation modelling using IBM AMOS software. Stratified proportionate sampling was employed for data collection purposes and 561 samples were collected. It was observed that perceived overqualification and person environment fit had an indirect effect on turnover intention through employee wellbeing. The results of multi group invariance test showed that organization type moderated the perceived overqualification- employee wellbeing relationship and objective overqualification moderated the perceived overqualification - turnover intention relationship. The results are indicative of the fact that despite any contextual factors overqualified employees will exhibit turnover intention which may get scaled down if they perceive a fit. The study highlighted the strong wellbeing turnover intention association and the insignificant person environment fit- turnover intention association in all the models examined.