Overqualification in Socialization Context: A Social Capital Perspective

The relationship between overqualification and performance exists puzzle and social influence of overqualification on employees, especially during socialization process received less attention. Integrating social capital perspective and status inconsistency theory, we theorized a moderated mediation model that links objective overqualification to performance from social capital development. Using official archival data of one real estate agency company in mainland China, we delineated the general pattern of 4690 newcomers’ social capital accumulation process in the first six months and how objective overqualification affected degree centrality change and subsequently job performance. We found support for our main hypotheses that objective overqualification negatively affected in-degree centrality increase and subsequently performance. Experience strengthened this negative effect. We discussed the theoretical and practical implications of this research.