Orfalea College of Business, California Polytechnic State University.
Institute of International Business, Georgia State University.
J Appl Psychol. 2017 Jun;102(6):993-1001. doi: 10.1037/apl0000201. Epub 2017 Mar 9.
Separate streams of organizational socialization research have recognized the importance of (a) newcomer proactivity and (b) manager support in facilitating newcomer adjustment. However, extant research has largely focused on the newcomers' experience, leaving the perspectives of managers during socialization relatively unexplored-a theoretical gap that has implications both for newcomer adjustment and manager-newcomer interactions that may serve as a basis for future relationship development. Drawing from the "interlocked" employee behavior argument of Weick (1979), we propose that managers' perception of newcomers' proactive behaviors are associated with concordant manager behaviors, which, in turn, support newcomer adjustment. Further, we investigate a cognitive mechanism-managers' evaluation of newcomers' commitment to adjust-which we expect underlies the proposed relationship between newcomers' proactive behaviors and managers' supportive behaviors. Using a time-lagged, 4-phase data collection of a sample of new software engineers in India and their managers, we were able to test our hypothesized model as well as rule out alternative explanations via multilevel structural equation modeling. Results broadly supported our model even after controlling for manager-newcomer social exchange relationship, proactive personalities of both newcomers and managers, and potential effects of coworker information providing. The implications of our findings for theory and practice are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record
组织社会化研究的两个独立分支都认识到（a）新员工的积极性和（b）管理者支持对于促进新员工适应的重要性。然而，现有研究主要关注新员工的体验，而管理者在社会化过程中的观点相对没有得到充分探索——这一理论空白既对新员工的适应产生影响，也对管理者与新员工的互动产生影响，这些互动可能为未来的关系发展提供基础。我们借鉴了 Weick（1979）的“相互关联”员工行为论点，提出管理者对新员工积极行为的看法与管理者的一致行为相关，而这种一致行为又反过来支持新员工的适应。此外，我们研究了一种认知机制——管理者对新员工调整意愿的评估——我们预计这种认知机制是新员工积极行为与管理者支持行为之间关系的基础。通过对印度一批新软件工程师及其管理者进行的时间滞后的 4 阶段数据收集，我们能够通过多层次结构方程建模来检验我们的假设模型，并排除替代解释。即使在控制了管理者-新员工社会交换关系、新员工和管理者的积极人格以及同事信息提供的潜在影响后，研究结果仍广泛支持我们的模型。我们的研究结果对理论和实践都具有启示意义。
