How Two Motivational Orientations Forge Newcomers’ Cohort Network Centrality and Emotional Support

Abstract

Social connections play a vital role in helping newcomers fit into a new work environment. In addition to seeking important information from organizational “insiders” such as coworkers and leaders, newcomers also need social support from other newcomers with similar experiences during the socialization process. In the current study, drawing on socioanalytic theory, we propose that newcomers with a competitive or cooperative orientation will follow different networking patterns within their friendship cohort network. Newcomers with a high competitive orientation will gradually enter the core of the friendship cohort network, while newcomers with high cooperative orientation will have a higher increase of in-degree centrality. A cohort with 438 newcomers in a large manufacturing company was tracked for eleven months (six waves) after entering the company to test our hypotheses, showing that competitive orientation is positively related to newcomers’ increases of coreness centrality, and cooperative orientation is positively related to increases of in-degree centrality. Further, the increase of coreness centrality is positively related to newcomers’ perceived emotional support from other newcomers, which in turn reduced their work-related emotional exhaustion.