"Overqualified" ? Research on the Influence Mechanism of Illegitimate Tasks on Employees' Creative Performance

Authors

  • Zhengdong Li
  • Jinghan Xu

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.56028/aemr.3.1.328

Keywords:

Illegitimate tasks; organization-based self-esteem; psychological resilience; creative performance.

Abstract

As a new type of stressor in the workplace, illegitimate tasks (IT) bring some confusion to employees' rational allocation of resources, and reduce employees' work passion because of their offensive professional identity. In turn, it reduces the creative performance that can benefit the long-term development of the organization and the individual. Based on the conservation of resources theory and the stress-as-offense-to-self theory (SOS), using the method of multi-period survey data, this paper discusses the influence mechanism of illegitimate tasks on employee creative performance (CP) from a cognitive perspective. The results show that IT are negatively related to employee CP, and can be indirectly related through organization-based self-esteem (OBSE), that is, OBSE plays an intermediary role between IT and employee CP. In addition, the study found that psychological resilience (PR) plays a double moderating role in the direct or indirect relationship between IT and employee CP. This study expands and deepens the discussion of the mechanism between IT and employee CP, and lays a foundation for promoting the follow-up research of IT.

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Published

2023-02-08