Increasing Proactive Coping in Organizational Newcomers: Improving Job Adaptation or Rocking the Boat?

Abstract

Proactivity has positive effects for the adaptation to the workplace. This study introduces an intervention that aims to enhance one important resource of newcomer adaptation, proactive coping, by a resource accumulation and controllability intervention for organizational newcomers. The effectiveness of the intervention (a structured booklet) was assessed in a sample of organizational newcomers ( N = 172) within a longitudinal evaluation design (one-pretest double-posttest design with a treatment and a control group). The intervention improved proactive coping and enhanced an important proximal adaptation outcome, role clarity (mediated by proactive coping). However, the intervention also increased intention to quit especially among those newcomers who had previous job experience (i.e., job changers). Overall, the study demonstrates that increasing proactive coping improves the adaptation of organizational newcomers with respect to role clarity and therefore provides a promising starting point for additional intervention programs but also demonstrates limits of such an intervention.