This article addresses the impact of leader psychological need satisfaction on employees. We draw on the self-determination theory and leader-member exchange theory to investigate if and how leader psychological need satisfaction trickles down to employee psychological need satisfaction. Adopting a multi-actor, multilevel design, results from 1036 leader–employee dyads indicate that employee-rated LMX mediates the trickle-down effect of leader psychological need satisfaction. Additional analyses of leader psychological needs show that leader competence is the main psychological need that underlying this relationship. We (...) also found an unexpected negative association between leader autonomy need satisfaction and employee competence need satisfaction. Overall, this study shows the importance of both leaders’ psychological need satisfaction and employee perceptions of the relationship quality for employee psychological need satisfaction. (shrink)

In today’s business world, the phenomenon of overqualification is widespread. Organizations need to consider – how to motivate the overqualified employees to utilize their qualifications, for example, promoting creative performance. Based on person-organization fit theory, this study explored when and how employees, who feel overqualified can engage in creative performance. Data were collected from 170 supervisor-subordinate dyads of 41 groups in 10 manufacturing companies across two timepoints in China. Results revealed that perceived overqualification is positively related to organizational identification when (...) employee development-oriented organizational culture is strong but negatively related to organizational identification when employee development-oriented organizational culture is weak, organizational identification is positively related to creative performance, the indirect relationship between perceived overqualification and creative performance via organizational identification is moderated by employee development-oriented organizational culture. We provide several theoretical contributions to the overqualification literature and make some suggestions to motivate the overqualified employees to use their surplus qualifications within the organizations. (shrink)