Speaker: Professor Aleksandra Luksyte, Department of Management and Organisations, The University of Western Australia’s Business School

Time: 2:00-3:30pm, Thursday, Nov. 15, 2012

In this talk, Aleksandra will present a series of empirical studies in which she examined one of the prevalent organisational problems in the modern global economy – overqualification or having more skills, abilities, and experience than required for a job. Although overqualification leads to a host of negative outcomes such as increased voluntary turnover and counterproductive work behaviour, overqualified people have the potential to become great workers if they are managed properly. Aleksandra will present findings of why overqualified employees voluntarily quit and deviate and what organisations can do to not only minimise these negative outcomes, but encourage these workers to utilise their potential constructively in the form of increased creative performance. Further, incorporating a relational perspective into overqualification, Aleksandra explored overqualification in mentor-protégé dyads. How do the quality and the dynamics of mentoring relationships differ if either a mentor or a protégé is overqualified? Finally, considering the globalisation of the workplace, Aleksandra examined some cross-cultural differences in the work experience of overqualified employees across Middle Eastern (e.g., Saudi Arabia) and Western (e.g., USA) employment settings. Overqualification is Aleksandra’s research passion and thus the audience’s feedback about potential research questions/collaborations in this domain is highly anticipated and welcomed!

Aleksandra Luksyte is an Assistant Professor in the Management and Organisations discipline at the University of Western Australia Business School. She received her PhD in Industrial-Organisational Psychology in 2011 from University of Houston, Texas, USA. Her research focuses on two primary domains: 1) overqualification or underemployment and 2) diversity in the workplace. Currently, she conducts projects about overqualification among various demographic groups and roles (e.g., leadership), gender and innovation, and the interactive effects of presenteeism and demographic dissimilarity on team members’ engagement. Since her tenure in UWA, Aleksandra has won approximately $100,000 in competitive research grants. She has published two book chapters and seven articles in such journals as Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, Human Resource Management, and delivered 31 conference presentations. In 2011, Aleksandra was awarded the UWA Business School’s Ahern Early Career Researcher Portfolio Prize for the most outstanding early career researcher for the Business School. In 2012, she was selected as the fellow for the Australia-China Young Researchers Exchange Program.