The organizational socialization field fragmentation: a bibliometric review

Abstract

Organizational socialization is gaining momentum in business research, and statistical data shows us the importance of this topic for practitioners as well. In this study, the vast organizational socialization literature published over the past three decades is analysed using bibliometric methods in order to explore the scope of the field, detect current research priorities, and identify the most prominent papers and authors. We identify thematically related clusters of research and show how the organizational socialization field has evolved through interconnected, yet distinct, subfields. Specifically, three distinct aspects have been emphasized at different time periods: (1) the organizational socialization tactics view in the 1980s; (2) newcomer proactivity, information seeking, and the uncertainty reduction process in the 1990s; and (3) a person-by-situation approach in the last decade, which is a mix of both. The implications for future research into organizational socialization research are presented and discussed.