From Talent Underutilization to Sustainable Innovation: The Roles of Meaningfulness and Professional Identity

Perceived overqualification has attracted widespread scholarly attention; however, its impact on employees’ innovative behavior remains inconclusive, particularly from a sustainability perspective. Drawing on person–job fit theory, self-determination theory, and social identity theory, this study develops an integrated framework to examine the mechanisms and conditions under which perceived overqualification inhibits innovative behavior, with a focus on the sustainable utilization of human capital. This study proposes that perceived overqualification undermines employees’ sense of job meaningfulness, thereby reducing intrinsic motivation and limiting sustained engagement in innovative activities. Professional identity is introduced as a key boundary condition that buffers this negative process. Based on a three-wave time-lagged dataset collected from employees in high-tech and knowledge-intensive organizations, the findings reveal that perceived overqualification is negatively associated with innovative behavior. Job meaningfulness mediates this relationship, while professional identity weakens the negative effect of overqualification on job meaningfulness and further attenuates its indirect negative impact on innovative behavior. Overall, the findings suggest that the consequences of perceived overqualification depend on employees’ ability to maintain meaning and professional identity under conditions of misfit. This study highlights the importance of activating underutilized human capital and provides important implications, from a sustainable human resource management perspective, for enhancing resource utilization efficiency and fostering sustainable innovation.