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.

EXPRESS: The Interactive Effects of Socialization Tactics and Work Locus of Control on Newcomer Work Adjustment, Job Embeddedness, and Voluntary Turnover

Previous research has focused on general best practices for onboarding organizational newcomers. In this study, we shift the conversation to address the question: for whom are certain socialization tactics more or less beneficial? Whereas institutionalized socialization tactics provide considerable structure and help newcomers adjust, less is known about whether and how individual psychological differences cause some newcomers to react differently to the same tactics. To examine the interplay between organizational socialization efforts and newcomer individual differences, we hypothesize that newcomers’ work locus of control (WLOC) 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 WLOC to turnover. Data collected from 676 newcomers in various organizations provided general support for our hypotheses: Newcomers with an external WLOC showed higher social integration and embeddedness and lower turnover under institutionalized tactics, but lower social integration and embeddedness and higher turnover under individualized tactics. Their turnover was also reduced from individualized to institutionalized tactics. In contrast, newcomers with an internal WLOC were less influenced by either socialization tactic approach in terms of their social integration, embeddedness, or turnover.

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.

I’ll do it myself: self-leadership, proactivity, and socialization

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore newcomers as active participants within their own socialization, through the influence of self-leadership on proactivity and subsequently organizational socialization and organizational commitment. Design/methodology/approach Data collected from 193 organizational newcomers (i.e. individuals within their first year at an organization) working in a variety of industries were examined within three serial mediation models in PROCESS. Findings The results of these analyses suggest that self-leadership influences organizational newcomers’ adjustment and subsequent commitment by assisting them in seeking organizational resources. Research limitations/implications This study answers calls to explore both the mediating mechanisms through which self-leadership processes influence organizational outcomes and the complex relationships between human workplace interactions and the proximal and distal outcomes of socialization. Practical implications The findings indicate that organizational stakeholders should enhance the self-leadership abilities of newcomer, thereby easing the socialization burden on organizations. Originality/value This paper offers a novel framework (i.e. self-leadership) for understanding newcomer socialization and provides an encompassing model that recognizes individual capacities, communicative behaviors, adjustment and subsequent organizational attitudes.

Increasing Proactive Coping in Organizational Newcomers: Improving Job Adaptation or Rocking the Boat?

Proactivity has positive effects for the adaptation to the workplace. This study introduces an intervention that aims to enhance one important resource of newcomer adaptation, proactive coping, by a resource accumulation and controllability intervention for organizational newcomers. The effectiveness of the intervention (a structured booklet) was assessed in a sample of organizational newcomers ( N = 172) within a longitudinal evaluation design (one-pretest double-posttest design with a treatment and a control group). The intervention improved proactive coping and enhanced an important proximal adaptation outcome, role clarity (mediated by proactive coping). However, the intervention also increased intention to quit especially among those newcomers who had previous job experience (i.e., job changers). Overall, the study demonstrates that increasing proactive coping improves the adaptation of organizational newcomers with respect to role clarity and therefore provides a promising starting point for additional intervention programs but also demonstrates limits of such an intervention.

How do newcomers fit in? The dynamics between person—environment fit and social capital across cultures

This paper integrates the concepts of person—environment (PE) fit and social capital and examines the social dynamics of organizational newcomers’ development of fit with their new environment in the light of national cultural variations. Specifically, we present a conceptual framework that illustrates how newcomers fit in with their work environment in terms of person—job (PJ) and person—organization (PO) fit through their building and exercising of social capital. We suggest that newcomers’ initial fit with their direct supervisor (i.e. PS fit) and their immediate work group fit (i.e. PG fit) will help them to develop structural and relational social capital in the organization, which in turn facilitate the development of greater PJ and PO fit. Acknowledging that social processes are culture-bound, we also examine the moderating effects of individualism/collectivism and power distance on the process of developing PE fit, and we provide insights for both scholars and managers in applying the model.