Colleagues, Friends, and Both: How Different Social Networks Affect Processes of Newcomer Adjustment

Abstract

Newcomer adjustment literature maintains that newcomers should be strategic and purposeful to build social networks (e.g., information, friendship) to facilitate their adjustment to the new job. However, the literature ignores the overlap between information and friendship networks and how the overlapping network helps newcomers to adjust. Based on social network research and the literature on newcomer adjustment, we propose that different social networks (i.e., information, friendship, and overlapping) will affect newcomer learning, assimilation, and role-making, respectively. Four waves of data collected from a sample of 178 organizational newcomers were used to test our hypotheses. Results suggest that the number of strong information ties positively predicted role clarity and subsequent task performance (i.e., the learning process); the number of weak friendship ties negatively predicted organizational identification and subsequent job satisfaction (i.e., the assimilation process); the number of “close comrades” (i.e., those ties that strong information connections overlapped with strong friendship connections) positively, whereas the number of “indifferent workmates” (i.e., those ties that strong information connections overlapped with weak friendship connections) negatively predicted job-change negotiation and subsequent authentic self-expression (i.e., the role-making process). Overall, this study shows that different social networks have implications for different adjustment processes for newcomers, and highlights the importance of the overlapping networks for newcomer role-making.