Perceived overqualification has been a hot topic in the field of organizational behavior in recent years and has become very common with the spread of education. In addition, in the current era of open innovation, the demand for innovative behaviors by enterprises is increasing day by day. Therefore, this study intended to link the two to explore the relationship between them. Based on self-evaluation theory and face theory, taking enterprise employees as the research object, this paper discusses the impact of perceived overqualifications on employees’ innovative behavior and the internal mechanism and examines the first-order and high-order moderating effects of ability–face pressure and length of service in turn. The results showed that perceived overqualifications had a positive impact on employees’ innovation behavior, and felt trust had a mediating role in the relationship. Ability face pressure played a negative moderating role in the impact of felt trust on innovative behavior and played a negative moderating role in the impact of perceived overqualifications on innovative behavior. With the increase in the length of service, the negative moderating effect of ability face pressure on the relationship between perceived overqualifications and employees’ innovative behavior weakened. It is expected that these results will enable companies to understand the internal mechanisms of employee perceived overqualification, enlighten leaders to give more trust to employees, help companies to improve employees’ innovative behavior, and pay attention to the psychological factors of employees, which will help to create a sustainable work environment and promote sustainable business development.

Although the literature suggests that firms tend to adopt “conservative” behavior in the face of positive performance feedback, there are also studies that take the opposite view on the impact of positive performance feedback. Based on the behavior theory of the firm and regulatory focus theory, this study explored the impact of positive performance feedback on innovation search behavior and the boundary effect of CEO regulatory focus to gain insight into the mechanisms of innovation search behavior and to promote innovation for sustainable development. Based on data from 230 biopharmaceutical companies in China, the analysis found that: (1) positive performance feedback had a significant positive effect on depth search behavior and a significant negative effect on breadth search behavior; (2) CEOs’ promotion focus had a negative moderating effect on the relationship between positive performance feedback and depth search behavior and a positive moderating effect on the relationship between positive performance feedback and breadth search behavior; and (3) CEOs’ prevention focus positively moderated the relationship between positive performance feedback in relation to depth search behavior. This study extends the behavior theory of the firm and reveals the mechanism of the differential impact of positive performance feedback on innovation search behavior, which has implications for the study of which innovation search practices should be conducted by high-performing firms to promote sustainable development.