I despise but also envy you: A dyadic investigation of perceived overqualification, perceived relative qualification, and knowledge hiding

Integrating relative deprivation (Crosby, 1984) and social comparison (Buunk & Gibbons, 2007) theories, this paper extends perceived overqualification to the dyad level with perceived relative qualification, and proposes that the two may lead to employees' knowledge hiding from relevant peers through a complex interpersonal process. Across two studies, with 940 dyadic-level observations (Study 1) and 245 dyadic-level observations (Study 2), respectively, the social relations modeling analyses revealed that an employee who perceived himself/herself as overqualified for the job was more likely to hide knowledge from his/her peers on the team. Furthermore, when the employee perceived himself/herself as relatively more qualified than a specific peer, he/she was more likely to hide knowledge from this peer because he/she was both contemptuous and envious of this peer. Finally, the relationship between the focal employee's relative qualification to a specific peer and his/her knowledge hiding from this peer via his/her contempt and envy of this peer, respectively, was stronger when his/her perceived overqualification was low than when it was high. Implications for theory, practice and future research are discussed.