The Role of Information Seeking Behavior in Newcomers' Organizational Socialization

Abstract

The primary goal of this study focuses on exploring the relationship between newcomers' information seeking behaviors and organizational socialization. Organizational socialization is a process that newcomers should experience in their work life. In this process many organizational socialization tactics will be provided to help newcomers learn the organizational culture. However, in recent years many researchers thought that an individual should play a pro-active role during his or her organizational socialization process. This study adopts a pro-active perspective to address the role of information seeking behavior in newcomers' organizational socialization. Therefore, the present study hypothesizes that the information seeking behaviors will be positively related to the organizational socialization. A survey from 239 respondents who serve in several organizations was co.nducted in this study. The results show that a newcomer who has higher frequency of information seeking behaviors is more likely to have higher degree of organizational socialization.