When Job Engagement Fades: How Overqualification, Pay Dissatisfaction, and Abusive Supervision Drive Turnover Intention

In many contemporary organizations, declining job engagement and increasing turnover intention have emerged as pressing challenges. While prior studies have identified various antecedents of engagement, relatively little is known about how employees simultaneously interpret multiple workplace cues as part of a broader social information environment. Drawing on Social Information Processing theory, this study proposes an integrated framework in which perceived overqualification, pay dissatisfaction, and abusive supervision function as interconnected negative social signals that shape turnover intention through job engagement. Using data from a two-wave longitudinal survey of 258 employees from multiple Korean enterprises, the results show that each of these negative cues undermine employees’ job engagement, which in turn mediates their effects on turnover intention. Theoretically, this study highlights job engagement as a socially interpreted cognitive–emotional state and identifies a unified social information pathway through which negative workplace experiences contribute to withdrawal. Practically, the findings emphasize the importance of designing work environments, compensation systems, and supervisory practices that communicate recognition of competence, fairness, and respectful treatment to sustain engagement and reduce talent loss.