Perceived overqualification, prosocial service behavior, job crafting and person-group fit of the flight attendants: Testing a moderated-mediation model

This research aimed to comprehend how prosocial service behaviors of flight attendants can be improved in the airline industry, which is a crucial element of competitive advantage in human-centered sectors. We established a model comprising perceived overqualification, prosocial service behavior, job crafting, and person-group fit to achieve this purpose, under the framework of person-job fit theory. 315 flight attendants from two airline companies took part in this research, located in Istanbul, Turkey. IBM AMOS 21.0 software was applied for testing by establishing a structural equation model. The findings indicate that perceived overqualification of employees had a significant direct effect on their prosocial service behavior, as well as an indirect effect through job crafting. Moreover, person-group fit was established as the boundary condition that increases the influence of perceived overqualification on job crafting, displaying a moderated mediation effect. Our model is a novel attempt at the literature, being the first study to investigate the conditional influence of person-group fit in the airline industry under the context of person-job fit theory. This research explains how perceived overqualification can be a source of competitive advantage for companies aiming to excel through customer service by highlighting the importance of person-group fit in this association, which are valuable contributions to theory and practice.