Perceived overqualification and cyberloafing: the role of learning and performance climate

Cyberloafng ubiquitously exists in organizations and has increasingly gained concerns among scholars and managers. Exploring the correlations among perceived overqualification, learning, performance climate, and cyberloafing is the goal of this current study. Under the conservation of resources theory, we looked into the hypothesis that perceived overqualification might influence the occurrence of cyberloafing, but resorting to learning would counter this effect, thus diminishing cyberloafing. Further, we explored the moderating effect of performance climate. We collected two-wave source data from 404 Chinese employees to test these ideas. Results support the notion that a suppressed mediational model of learning is supported empirically: perceived overqualification fosters employee cyberloafing, but also increases the propensity to learning, which decreases employee cyberloafing. Moreover, the indirect impact of perceived overqualification on cyberloafing thru learning is moderated by performance climate. On account of the results, we end up discussing the potential implications for theoretical research and for organizational management practices.