Organizational Newcomers Research Articles

Exploring newcomer voice and silence dynamics: The role of organizational socialization

AbstractThis paper examines the temporal dynamics of newcomer voice and silence in organizations, focusing on the role of organizational socialization. While prior research has explored the antecedents and effects of newcomer voice behaviour, little attention has been given to how voice and silence evolve over time as newcomers become more familiar with their roles and the organizational context. Drawing on multiple goal pursuit theory, this study investigates how organizational socialization influences the trajectories of newcomer promotive voice, prohibitive voice and employee silence. We test our hypotheses on a sample of 198 organizational newcomers over four waves of data, employing random coefficient growth models. The findings suggest that employee voice and silence follow distinct trajectories and provide partial support for the influence of organizational socialization on these changes in newcomer behaviour. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Learning the ropes or walking a tight one? Exploring the factors of organizational assimilation in design firms

New employees often question their roles, expectations and fit within the workplace. Reducing these uncertainties is accomplished via a complex process of organizational assimilation (OA), which varies based on the individual, their workplace and environmental shifts. Evidence suggests the effects of organizational change may be especially pronounced in marginalized employees, not only among those from underrepresented groups but also from those lacking established professional networks (i.e. entry-level workers and organizational newcomers). While scholars in other fields have cited the importance of OA, little is known about its determinants in design. Understanding these factors is critical as the field seeks to diversify while facing changing norms. This study employed the Organizational Assimilation Index and Ragins and McFarlin’s Mentor Role Instrument to understand OA determinants. Responses from 92 emerging designers suggest that firm size, market sector and tenure bore little influence on OA. Yet those from underrepresented groups felt significantly less assimilated. Conversely, a mentor’s friendship, coaching and counselling can enhance assimilation. This study’s exploratory findings offer preliminary but important insights regarding those factors that may influence the assimilation of emerging designers. More specifically, it highlights the valuable role of mentorship while lending empirical evidence to potential challenges facing designers from underrepresented groups.

How learning-goal-oriented newcomers develop leader-member exchange (LMX): From agentic and communal behavior perspectives

Adopting the dual perspective model of agency and communion and role-making theory of leader–member exchange (LMX) development, this study explored whether and how newcomers with a high learning goal orientation (LGO) develop high-quality social exchange relationships with their leaders. Through a three-wave field survey of 199 organizational newcomers who were graduates entering the workplace, we found a direct and significant relationship between the newcomers’ LGO and LMX. We also found that their agentic and communal behaviors—specifically, self-improvement voice and knowledge sharing, respectively—served as dual mediating mechanisms of this relationship. This study answers the call for more research on how employees’ LGO motivates them to engage in behaviors conducive to social exchange development with their leaders. It also contributes to the emerging research on followership and understanding LMX development beyond the leader–member dyad. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.

When is more (not) better? On the relationships between the number of information ties and newcomer assimilation and learning

AbstractSocial capital plays a critical role in newcomer adjustment. However, research is lacking regarding the effective mobilization of social capital, in terms of how different information network characteristics jointly influence newcomer adjustment. Drawing on the literature on social networks and newcomer adjustment, we distinguish two crucial processes of newcomer adjustment, namely assimilation and learning, and propose that the extent to which newcomers' number of information ties influences the assimilation and learning processes depends on the frequency of social interactions (i.e., tie strength) and the status of network contacts (i.e., network status). To test our hypotheses, four waves of data were collected from a sample of 178 organizational newcomers. The results suggest that when network status is low, mobilizing a large information network reduces newcomers' organizational identification (an assimilation indicator), which in turn reduces their job satisfaction. Conversely, mobilizing a large information network with weak ties enhances newcomers' role clarity (a learning indicator) and in turn boosts their task performance. Overall, this study highlights the importance of considering tie strength and network status together with the number of information ties in efforts to facilitate newcomer adjustment.

Organizational Socialization in Professional Sport: The National Basketball Association’s Rookie Transition Program

Launched in 1986, the National Basketball Association’s (NBA) Rookie Transition Program (RTP) is the longest running program of its kind in U.S. professional sports. Jointly administered by the NBA and National Basketball Players Association, the RTP is designed to ease the transition of first-year players to the league. Over the course of 4 days, RTP participants engage with current and former NBA players, coaches, administrators, and other league stakeholders on topics that range from personal finance, to mental health, to social justice advocacy. Organizational scholars might describe the NBA RTP as an element of the league’s onboarding, or organizational socialization, strategy. In this case, students will reflect on their own socialization experiences as organizational newcomers before analyzing the components of the NBA RTP. Finally, students will apply what they learn through this case to design the agenda of a future NBA RTP.

Welcome to Our (Divided) Team

Abstract: Since team colleagues and leaders are the first points of contact for organizational newcomers, they could play an important role in newcomers’ socialization success. On the basis of the social identity approach and signaling theory, we expect perceived subgroups in the team and leader–member exchange (LMX), respectively, to predict socialization outcomes (i. e., social integration, organizational attractiveness, intentions to remain). Furthermore, we expect psychological safety to mediate these processes. We conducted a two-wave field study ( N = 56 interns) and an experimental vignette study ( N = 144 students). Results showed perceived subgroups (only in Study 2) and LMX to be related to socialization outcomes. Study 2 showed these relationships to be mediated by psychological safety. Thus, newcomers’ perceptions of their team and leader may be important in determining whether newcomers feel integrated and perceive their organization as attractive to remain in. Human resources practitioners should make organizational insiders aware of their role in newcomer socialization.

Is It Safe Yet? Perceptions of Psychological Safety Among Organizational Newcomers

Healthcare delivery organizations face immense pressure to rapidly integrate new employees into their workforce. Because it facilitates learning, psychological safety may be essential to new employee integration, but little is known about how organizational newcomers perceive it. We leverage a sample of nearly 26,000 healthcare workers to measure and explore organizational newcomers’ experience of psychological safety using multivariate regression. Counter to our expectations, we found that newcomers experienced significantly greater psychological safety than their more tenured counterparts (b = 0.06, p < 0.001); particularly, we found that moderately tenured staff with between six months and five years of service perceived significantly less psychological safety than newcomers. We found some evidence that the longest-tenured employees, by contrast, experienced more psychological safety than newcomers, though the significance did not persist when including covariates. Among newcomers, role and demographics explained some variance in psychological safety. Overall, our findings suggest that psychological safety may decline as organizational newcomers adjust to the demands of their jobs, with particular vulnerability between six months to five years of tenure. Targeted efforts to promote psychological safety in these groups may help healthcare organizations maintain learning and performance after onboarding new staff.

How and When Envious Newcomers Form Their Developmental Networks in New Organizations

Drawing upon social functional theories of emotion, we develop and test a theoretical model of how and when newcomer envy—the envy that newcomers experience as a consequence of their social comparisons with coworkers—can further or thwart their efforts to form developmental networks with desirable features. We theorized and found that envious newcomers who perceive themselves as similar to coworkers are more likely to undermine coworkers, a dysfunctional behavioral response that thwarts their efforts to develop developmental networks with diverse and high-status contacts. In contrast, envious newcomers who perceive themselves as dissimilar to coworkers are more likely to build relationships with high-level organizational members, which helps them to form developmental networks with the desirable features. Our study advances scholarship on workplace envy with our balanced and nuanced approach to answer questions on when envy is expressed in a functional or dysfunctional way and how the behavioral transmutations explain the role of envy in the formation of developmental networks. It provides empirical insights into one’s emotions and actions as predictors of one’s developmental network formation and contributes to the further understanding of the origins of social networks in organizations. Additionally, it extends research on organizational newcomers that has not yet explored newcomers’ complex emotions (e.g., envy) and negative behaviors (e.g., undermining coworkers) as well as their implications.

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

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.

The long walk together: The role of institutionalized socialization in shaping newcomers' future expectations about their networks

Although a future orientation plays an important role in Van Maanen and Schein's (1979) classic conceptualization of organizational socialization tactics, human resource management practices and scholarly research tend to focus on individuals' adjustment to the present. We address this significant gap by investigating how institutionalized socialization facilitates newcomer outcomes via its impact on newcomers' expected long-term friendship and cooperation networks. Based on construal level theory, we argue that expectations about one's long-term networks reflect perceptions of the stable nature of one's current networks. A 4-wave study with two samples of newcomers in diverse Chinese organizations found that institutionalized socialization predicted positive development in the size of newcomers' current and expected networks, which in turn predicted managers' ratings of newcomers' in-role performance and extra-role behaviors in the form of altruistic helping and taking charge. The study thus documents a relatively unknown benefit of socialization on newcomers' future expectations about their social relationships and the impact on newcomers' behaviors.

Navigating Water Cooler Talks Without the Water Cooler: Uncertainty and Information Seeking During Remote Socialization

Research on newcomer uncertainty and information seeking behaviors has largely assumed that newcomers could interact with and observe others in physical work settings. This study examined how organizational newcomers sought information during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic without such possibility. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 30 individuals who began jobs remotely between February and November 2020, we uncovered three major areas of uncertainty: workplace relationships, task/role performance, and organizational norms. Our findings demonstrate how these newcomers managed the uncertainties through six information seeking tactics: organizing virtual small talks; initiating unsanctioned in-person meetings; asking overt and targeted questions; utilizing digital repositories; unintentional limit testing; and anticipating future information seeking. We discuss implications for remote newcomer socialization and provide propositions for future research.

Do not ask, but you shall still receive: Newcomer reactions to receiving negative gossip.

As research regarding the targets and initiators of workplace gossip is gaining traction, one perspective that remains overlooked is the gossip receiver. Organizational newcomers are a particularly relevant population to study the impact of receiving negative gossip on because they use social information to navigate an unfamiliar organizational terrain. We propose a parallel moderated mediation model in which receiving negative gossip has contradicting effects on newcomer job anxiety through perceived social inclusion and negative rumination, and agreeableness as a boundary condition of the effects of receiving negative gossip. We collected data from 202 newcomers using a four-wave time-lagged design and found that receiving negative gossip increased newcomer job anxiety via negative rumination but did not decrease job anxiety via perceived social inclusion. Further, agreeableness moderated the effect of receiving negative gossip on negative rumination (but not perceived social inclusion) such that the effect of receiving negative gossip on negative rumination was stronger for less agreeable newcomers. Lastly, the indirect effect of receiving negative gossip on job anxiety via negative rumination was stronger for less agreeable newcomers. Theoretical and practical implications specific to gossip and newcomers are discussed.

IDENTITY FOCUSED ADAPTATION OF NEWCOMERS IN ORGANIZATIONS: RESOURSE FOR PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT

The report addresses the issue of adaptation of newcomers in organizations. This problem is very important now in business and public organizations according to the problem of labor productivity, staff turnover, corporate culture etc. In spite of obvious importance of the adaptation in organization, the studies of this problem require new approaches and methods. Mechanisms are explored that help to retain the staff in organization and to create a desire to continue its activities in this organization. The research is implemented to the framework of the business-psychological approach (S Benton, N. Ivanova, theory of social identity (H. Tajfel, J.C. Turner), concepts of adaptation (T. Bazarov, N. Volkova etc.). Adaptation of newcomers is considered as a natural stage of professional and social self-determination of the individual, as overcoming the identity crisis and identity forming process. In the course of adaptation, an identity is formed that is adequate in relation to the new social roles and goals of activity. The purpose of the study: to develop the identity focused adaptation model, to test the role of this model in the work with newcomers in organization. Methodology: questionnaire (N= 109), Job Satisfaction Survey (N=15), case study in organizations. Results: The role of information and psychological support of a novice from the manager, mentor and team while including a specialist in joint activities is revealed. The directions of improving the system of adaptation of newcomers in the organization are highlighted. An identity focused adaptation model has been developed, which includes the following components: A) Preliminary information to newcomers: preparatory briefing about the company; detailed briefing about the company's rules and regulations. B) Information about newcomers to colleagues: about the new employee, his workplace, the tasks of his adaptation, the appointment of a mentor. C) Communications of the mentor: checking the workplace, the initial conversation, monitoring the problems and successes, the employee's initiation into the company's affairs. D) Communications of the manager: aimed at reducing the uncertainty of the newcomer in the first days of work. E) Communication of newcomers: questions, feedback, ideas, doubts, wishes. Results of this research can be useful for management, counseling and coaching for development of newcomer’s identity, loyalty, and performance. Keywords: business psychology, identity focused adaptation model, personnel management, loyalty, adaptation of personnel, social identity, strategy of communication.

Welcome to Our (Divided) Team: Perceived Subgroups and LMX During Newcomer Socialization

Organizational newcomers’ early team and leadership experiences can determine socialization success. Team colleagues and leaders form the first points of contact for newcomers, but research on their role in socialization remains scarce. Based on the social identity approach and signaling theory, we expect perceived subgroups in the team and LMX to predict socialization outcomes (social integration, organizational attractiveness, intentions to remain) and psychological safety to mediate these processes. We conducted a two-wave field study and an experimental vignette study. Results confirmed most hypotheses, indicating that low perceived subgroups and high LMX function as precursors to successful socialization via psychological safety.

How Voice and Silence Develop in Newcomers: A Four-Wave Organizational Socialization Perspective

We develop and test a dynamic perspective into the ways in which voice behavior and employee silence develop in organizational newcomers. Unlike prior cross-sectional research, we focus on the differences in changes of voice behavior—distinguishing between promotive and prohibitive voice behavior—and employee silence. We suggest that these changes in employee voice and silence depend on the degree to which organizational newcomers understand and adjust to organizational norms, goals, and values (i.e., organizational socialization). We draw from multiple goal pursuit theory to substantiate our hypotheses which we test on 198 organizational newcomers across four waves of data. Using random coefficient growth models, we find employee voice and silence to develop along relatively independent trajectories and provide partial evidence for the influence of organizational socialization on these changes in newcomer behavior. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Do not ask, but you shall receive: Newcomer reactions to receiving negative gossip about supervisors

As research regarding the targets and initiators of workplace gossip is gaining traction, one perspective that remains overlooked is the gossip receiver. Organizational newcomers, who use social information to navigate an unfamiliar organizational terrain, are a particularly relevant population to study the impact of receiving negative gossip. We propose a parallel moderated mediation model in which receiving negative gossip about supervisors has contradicting effects on newcomer job anxiety through perceived social inclusion and negative rumination, and agreeableness as a boundary condition of the effects of receiving negative gossip about supervisors. We collected data from 202 newcomers using a four-wave time-lagged design and found that receiving negative gossip about supervisors increased newcomer job anxiety via negative rumination but did not decrease job anxiety via perceived social inclusion. Further, agreeableness moderated the effect of receiving negative gossip about supervisors on negative rumination (but not perceived social inclusion) such that the effect of receiving negative gossip about supervisors on negative rumination was stronger for less agreeable newcomers. Lastly, the indirect effect of receiving negative gossip about supervisors on job anxiety via negative rumination was stronger for less agreeable newcomers. Theoretical and practical implications specific to gossip and newcomers are discussed.

Tracking the Process of Resilience: How Emotional Stability and Experience Influence Exhaustion and Commitment Trajectories

This study responds to calls to conceptualize resilience as a dynamic process by examining individual trajectories of emotional exhaustion and affective commitment over time in the face of ongoing role demands. In contrast to research conceptualizing resilience as a dispositional trait, we conceptualize resilience in terms of patterns of between-individual variation in response trajectories (dynamic resilience). In a longitudinal study spanning three months and 12 observational periods, we show that individuals high in emotional stability had more static affective commitment trajectories and that organizational newcomers had less pronounced emotional exhaustion trajectories in response to ongoing demands. Both the patterns shown for those with high emotional stability and newcomers are indicative of greater dynamic resilience. Furthermore, we found that affective commitment trajectories were significant predictors of actual retention through the mediating mechanism of intent to remain. We discuss how our approach offers opportunities to study resilience in dynamic settings.

The interactive effects of socialization tactics and work locus of control on newcomer work adjustment, job embeddedness, and voluntary turnover

Previous research has tended to focus on general best practices for onboarding organizational newcomers. In this study, we shift the conversation to instead address the question: for whom are certain socialization tactics more or less beneficial? Whereas institutionalized socialization tactics provide considerable structure intended to reduce uncertainty and help newcomers adjust, less is known about whether and how individual psychological differences cause some newcomers to react differently to the same socialization tactics. To examine the interplay between organizational socialization efforts and newcomer individual differences, we hypothesize that newcomers’ work locus of control moderates the relationship between socialization tactics and voluntary turnover. We also examine the indirect role of newcomer work adjustment—role clarity, work mastery, social integration—and job embeddedness in transmitting the interaction between socialization tactics and work locus of control to turnover. Data collected from 676 newcomers at four time points over 12 months in various organizations provided general support for our hypotheses: newcomers with an external work locus of control showed higher social integration and embeddedness and lower turnover under institutionalized socialization tactics, but lower social integration and embeddedness and higher turnover under individualized tactics. Their turnover was also reduced (about nine times) from individualized to institutionalized tactics. In contrast, newcomers with an internal work locus of control were less influenced by either socialization tactic approach in terms of their social integration, embeddedness, or turnover.

Virtual Watercoolers: A Field Experiment on Virtual Synchronous Interactions and Performance of Organizational Newcomers

Do virtual, yet informal and synchronous, interactions affect individual performance outcomes of organizational newcomers? We report results from a randomized field experiment conducted at a large global organization that estimates the performance effects of “virtual water coolers” for remote interns participating in the firm’s flagship summer internship program. Findings indicate that interns who had randomized opportunities to interact synchronously and informally with senior managers were significantly more likely to receive offers for full-time employment, achieved higher weekly performance ratings, and had more positive attitudes toward their remote internships. Further, we observed stronger results when the interns and senior managers were demographically similar. Secondary results also hint at a possible abductive explanation of the performance effects: virtual watercoolers between interns and senior managers may have facilitated knowledge and advice sharing. This study demonstrates that hosting brief virtual water cooler sessions with senior managers might have job and career benefits for organizational newcomers working in remote workplaces, an insight with immediate managerial relevance.

Change of organizational newcomers' unmet expectations: Does proactive coping matter?

Unmet expectations are one of the major sources of strain for organizational newcomers. We explore the change of newcomers’ expectations over time and propose that proactive coping should restrict the amount of unmet expectations. We recruited participants among employees from newly opened retail stores (N = 172) and accompanied them for six months after organizational entry. The results revealed a change of unmet expectations over time. Though proactive coping was related to a lower amount of unmet expectations right after organizational entry, unmet expectations increased after six months, especially in case of high proactive coping.