Complexities in International Organizational Socialization

The growing number of expatriates highlights the importance of organizational socialization as these people strive to adjust to a new work environment in a foreign country. Research hypotheses presented by Feldman (1997) are reviewed for their impact on future research. The complexities of organizational socialization or work adjustment within an international context are believed to transcend the bounds of simple linear relationships. Five of the hypotheses are discussed to illustrate these complexities and to offer new ideas for future research.     

新员工主动行为及其在组织社会化中的作用

组织社会化是组织行为学的热点研究问题之一, 最近学者们开始更多关注新员工主动行为在组织社会化中的作用。综合以往的研究, 新员工主动行为可以分为三类：角色定位、关系构建、自我提升。人格特质、目标取向、自我效能、情境变量对新员工主动行为有显著的预测作用。角色定位、关系构建和自我提升在新员工组织社会化过程中有着明显的积极作用。未来, 有必要在前因研究中整合情境因素与个人特质因素, 研究新员工的主动行为可能产生的负面影响以及开展本土化研究和跨文化的比较研究。     

Organizational Socialization: A Field Study into Socialization Success and Rate

The last decade has witnessed a resurgence of organizational socialization research. However, a critical question has been neglected: Is there a common underlying pattern to organizational socialization? We investigated newcomer learning, job satisfaction and intent to quit as common indicators of socialization, in research with 222 newcomers at two organizations during the crucial post‐entry period. The results support a learning‐dependent model of newcomer adjustment, with learning in specific domains related to improved attitudinal outcomes. Some aspects of organizational socialization were not uniform across the two organizations, suggesting a need for further development of socialization models and greater accounting for this in organizational socialization research.     

A Test of a Model of New Salespeople’S Socialization and Adjustment in a Collectivist Culture

Drawing largely on organizational socialization theory and its derivations, such as uncertainty reduction and sense-making theory, the authors propose and test empirically a process model of newcomer salesperson socialization in the South Korean context. The results indicate that both organization-initiated and newcomers’ proactive socialization tactics (i.e., seeking performance feedback and information seeking, building relationships and networks) significantly influence newcomers’ perceived level of accommodation (i.e., role clarity and social integration) and thus their adjustment to the new work environment (i.e., level of organizational commitment, job performance, and job satisfaction). The authors discuss the theoretical and managerial implications and present future research directions.     

员工组织社会化研究的概况

组织社会化是指个体为了适应其所在组织的价值体系、组织目标和行为规范而调整自己态度、行为的学习过程。文章在对组织社会化含义阐释的基础上,从组织社会化策略、组织社会化过程、组织社会化中员工信息寻求、组织社会化内容等4个方面,对当前组织社会化的研究现状进行介绍。文章最后指出了组织社会化的未来研究趋势     

国有企业新员工组织社会化内容的维度研究

在项目搜集、预试与正式调查的基础上,编制了一套具有良好信度和效度的新员工组织社会化问卷。对部分国有企业的员工进行调查,探索性因素分析的结果表明,国有企业员工的组织社会化内容由胜任工作社会化、组织文化社会化和领导政治社会化三个维度构成。文章最后对国有企业员工的组织社会化内容维度与已有研究成果的异同以及不同人口学变量的新员工组织社会化内容的差异进行了分析与讨论。     

企业员工组织社会化内容的结构维度

采用自行研制的组织社会化内容问卷,通过对全国14个城市854名员工进行问卷调查,对企业员工组织社会化内容结构维度进行了探讨。探索性因素分析（N=472）表明,我国企业员工组织社会化内容由组织文化、工作胜任、人际关系和组织政治4个维度构成。四因素模型在验证性因素分析(N=382)中得到了较好地验证。文章最后对组织社会化内容结构的含义、与已有西方研究成果的异同以及不同人口/组织学变量的员工组织社会化内容的差异进行了分析与讨论     

Getting What's New from Newcomers: Empowering Leadership,Creativity, and Adjustment in the Socialization Context

Researchers consistently argue that organizations need to generate creative ideas to ensure long‐term success and survival. One possible solution for increasing creativity is to inject “fresh blood” into the organization by hiring new employees. However, past work suggests there may be a number of impediments that stifle newcomer creativity and, further, that encouraging newcomer creativity may compromise other adjustment outcomes. Accordingly, the present research examines how empowering leaders, in conjunction with contextual and relational factors (i.e., organizational support for creativity and newcomers' trust in leaders), facilitate newcomer creativity. Study 1 indicates that empowering leadership positively predicts newcomer creativity and that this relationship is contingent on the organizational context. Study 2 reveals that a more specific and proximal contextual socialization factor–newcomers' trust in leaders–is a more potent moderator than organizational support for creativity. Further, these predictors operate through creative process engagement to influence creativity. Finally, results indicate positive links between empowering leadership and role clarity, attachment, and task performance, suggesting that empowering leadership may serve as an important, albeit overlooked, socialization tactic.     

Learning the Ropes: The Protective Role of Mentoring in Correctional Police Officers’ Socialization Process

Formal mentoring is an individualized and contextualized socialization tactic to enhance newcomers’ learning—acknowledged as essential in the early career stage—that can be of particular value when entering a fairly unpredictable and stressful workplace. This research aims to understand the moderating role of formal mentoring in the relationship between organizational socialization and 2 adjustment indicators, a positive 1 (commitment) and a negative 1 (turnover intention). A questionnaire was administered to 117 correctional police officer newcomers, as prisons are especially critical work contexts for newcomers. The results show a direct effect from both socialization and mentoring on commitment and turnover, and an interaction between socialization and mentoring on turnover, although not on commitment. When the socialization process progresses steadily, both socialization and mentoring contribute to good adjustment, but when traditional tactics go wrong, a different learning source (formal mentoring) exerts a protective function, limiting newcomers’ intention to quit. These findings give support to the usefulness of mentoring in a law enforcement context and provide some insight into defining formal mentoring programs.     

Socialization Tactics and Newcomer Information Acquisition

Research on organizational socialization has usually focused on what organizations do to socialize newcomers or on what newcomers do to socialize themselves. The purpose of this study was to integrate these two perspectives of socialization by investigating the relationships between socialization tactics, newcomers' information acquisition (i.e. feedback and observation) and socialization outcomes. Consistent with previous research, socialization tactics and information acquisition were related to socialization outcomes. Furthermore, institutionalized socialization was positively related to the frequency of newcomers' feedback and observation and the frequency of newcomers' feedback and observation was found to mediate several of the relationships between socialization tactics and outcomes. These results suggest that what newcomers can do to socialize themselves (e.g. acquire information through feedback and observation) is partly a function of what organizations do to socialize newcomers (e.g. the use of specific socialization tactics). The implications of these findings are discussed for the development of a more complete and integrated theory of organizational socialization.     

Organizational socialization tactics and newcomer proactive behaviors: An integrative study

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between organizational socialization tactics, newcomers’ self-efficacy, proactive behaviors, and socialization outcomes. Based on a sample of 140 co-op university students who completed surveys at the end of their work term, the results indicated that newcomers’ self-efficacy and institutionalized socialization tactics were positively related to newcomer proactive behaviors. The results also indicated that newcomer proactive behaviors partially mediated the relationship between their self-efficacy and organizational socialization tactics with a number of proximal and distal socialization outcomes. Furthermore, feedback-seeking and information-seeking moderated the relationship between socialization tactics and several socialization outcomes. Institutionalized socialization tactics were more strongly related to socialization outcomes for newcomers who engaged in less feedback-seeking and information-seeking behavior. These results support an interactionist approach to organizational socialization in which newcomers’ self-efficacy, proactive behavior, and organizational socialization tactics all contribute to newcomers’ adjustment and socialization.     

天津市幼儿教师社会化现状的调查与分析

随机抽取天津市十三所幼儿园的445名幼儿教师为调查对象,通过对其社会化内容和策略的问卷调查,探讨了天津市幼儿教师社会化发展的基本状况,结果发现：（1）幼儿教师“起始阶段”的职业选择主要受其父母影响,且对其职业大多认同,但对其孩子的职业期望,未表现出特殊偏向;（2）幼儿教师在社会化过程中对工作技能的学习认同度最高,而对单位政治的了解程度最低;（3）在影响幼儿教师社会化的诸多因素中,其主动策略占主导地位,幼教机构的社会化策略也占有重要地位;（4）观察／模仿策略是幼儿教师使用得最多的主动策略,而伴随策略是幼教机构最经常使用的社会化策略。     

Changes in person – organization fit: The impact of socialization tactics on perceived and actual P – O fit

This study examines the impact of socially oriented socialization tactics on changes in newcomer perceived and actual value-based person?–?organization (P?–?O) fit, and on the relations between these two measures of fit. Newcomers' fit was measured at entry (T1) and again after 4 months (T2) using the organizational culture profile (OCP; ). The results show that socialization tactics influence perceived fit, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment, but not actual fit. As hypothesized, perceived and actual fit become more congruent over time, suggesting a shift in newcomers' perceptions of the organization. Additional analyses were conducted to investigate the mediating influence of perceived fit on the relationship of investiture with job satisfaction and with organizational commitment and, for both outcomes, this was found to be significant. We discuss the implications for organization socialization procedures, research into newcomer entry using measures of actual and perceived fit, and HRM practices during the initial few months of organizational entry.     

组织社会化研究的整合：交互作用视角

组织社会化是个体由组织的外部成员转化为具有参与性和效益性内部人员的适应过程。当前组织社会化研究零碎、分裂,缺少统一理论做指导,亟须进行有效的整合。在论述整合的必要性的基础上,重点分析符号互动与组织社会化的关系,并建立组织社会化的交互作用模型,最后指出了模型的验证、细化及重视中介和调节变量等问题     

Socialization tactics and newcomer adjustment: A meta-analytic review and test of a model

One of the most popular and often studied topics in the organizational socialization literature is Van Maanen and Schein’s [Van Maanen, J., & Schein, E. H. (1979). Toward a theory of organizational socialization. In B. M. Staw (Ed.), Research in organizational behavior (Vol. 1), pp. 209-264. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.] theory of organizational socialization tactics. Over 30 studies on socialization tactics have been conducted in the past 20 years. In this meta-analysis, we examine the relationships between six socialization tactics and various indicators of newcomer adjustment as well as the moderating effects of study design (cross-sectional vs. longitudinal), measurement scale (use of complete vs. modified tactics scale), and type of newcomer (recent graduates vs. other newcomers). Our results indicate that institutionalized socialization tactics were negatively related to role ambiguity, role conflict, and intentions to quit, and positively related to fit perceptions, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, job performance, and a custodial role orientation. We also found that the social tactics (serial and investiture) were the strongest predictors of adjustment outcomes. The results also indicated that the relationships between the tactics and outcomes were stronger for recent graduates compared to other newcomers; cross-sectional designs compared to longitudinal designs; and when Jones’ [Jones, G. R. (1986). Socialization tactics, self-efficacy, and newcomers’ adjustments to organizations. Academy of Management Journal, 29, 262-279.] complete scales were used compared to modified versions. Support was also found for a mediation model of newcomer adjustment in which role conflict, role ambiguity, and fit perceptions partially mediate some of the relationships between the socialization tactics and distal outcomes of adjustment. The implications of these results for research and practice are discussed.     

Socialization preferences and intentions: Does one size fit all?

The purpose of this study was to investigate student preferences for socialization tactics and their intentions to be proactive when they begin a new job. We examined the relationship between the Five Factor Model of personality and proactive personality with socialization tactics preferences and proactive behavior intentions in a sample of 243 undergraduate university students enrolled in a cooperative management program. The results indicate that personality predicts preferences for socialization tactics and intentions to be proactive. In particular, individuals high on agreeableness prefer institutionalized socialization tactics and individuals high on extraversion and proactive personality report higher intentions to be proactive when they begin a new job. These results suggest that one size does not fit all newcomers when it comes to socialization. The implications for research and practice before and after organizational entry are discussed.     

Gender traits and identities in a "masculine" organization: the Israeli police force

Gender and occupational identities were examined within the Israeli police force, a stereotypically masculine organization. The principal hypothesis was that women in this organizational setting did not reject their gender identity. Rather, they self-attributed more traditionally masculine traits in addition to their feminine traits. This was especially so among women going through particularly intense occupational and organizational socialization needed for field jobs. The findings only partially confirmed the hypothesis. Most women in the sample considered themselves to be highly feminine, even though they self-attributed masculine traits. Although the women, like their male colleagues, ranked occupational identity higher than gender identity, their feminine identity (usually in contrast with the masculine organizational context) was not repressed and their gender identity was as strong as that of the men.     

恶意报复还是认同驱动?新员工的角色社会化程度对其职场排斥行为的作用机制

以往关于职场排斥形成机制的研究, 主要是基于冲突-报复的视角, 验证了人际冲突对职场排斥具有稳定的预测作用, 而这个解释逻辑很可能对新员工并不适用。本文基于角色认同理论, 考察新员工的角色社会化程度对其职场排斥行为的作用机制。通过对多阶段收集的249对新员工上下级匹配问卷分析发现, 在控制了经典的冲突报复机制之后, 角色认同机制能够解释新员工的职场排斥行为。具体来说, 结果显示：(1)新员工的角色社会化程度负向影响其职场排斥行为; (2)工作疏离感在新员工的角色社会化程度与职场排斥行为之间起中介作用; (3)发展性反馈在新员工的角色社会化程度与工作疏离感的关系中起调节作用; 进一步, (4)发展性反馈调节了工作疏离感对角色社会化程度-职场排斥行为关系的中介作用。本研究结果不仅从理论上拓展了职场排斥行为的研究视角, 为以后的进一步研究提供新的理论框架, 而且从角色认同的视角为组织管理新员工的职场排斥行为提供新思路。     

The dynamic relation between organizational and professional commitment of highly educated research and development (R&D) professionals

Researchers of the work-related commitment of professionals have investigated the possibility of conflict between organizational and professional forms of commitment. Drawing on the organizational socialization literature, the authors hypothesized that both forms of commitment would change with increasing organizational tenure. Specifically, the authors proposed that the patterns of change of the 2 forms of commitment would be complementary: Organizational commitment would take a U-shaped pattern of change, whereas professional commitment would take an inverse U-shaped pattern. The results, based on data collected from a sample of 204 research and development (R&D) professionals with PhDs, confirmed the U-shaped pattern of organizational commitment and the complementary relation between the 2 forms of commitment during the first 14 months after organizational entry. These findings suggest the importance of maintaining a balance between organizational and professional commitment and provide a method for identifying the critical period for interventions designed to increase retention of R&D professionals during their early organizational socialization.     

互动视角的组织社会化动态跟踪研究

以3项不同时间尺度的跟踪研究, 探索新员工组织社会化的动态与交互过程。首先, 通过在入职最初3个月每月为期1周的即时调研, 探索新员工与主管的沟通特征与机制; 然后通过为期3个月、时间间隔为1周, 针对新员工与其主管的配对短期跟踪调研, 探索社会化过程中学习与认同的动态特征与内部变化机制, 以及互动作用的动态变化特征; 最后通过为期1年、时间间隔为3个月的长期跟踪调研, 考察新员工主动参与组织社会化、领导者主动提供社会化支持的影响因素, 以及组织社会化的结果。