Not just for newcomers: Organizational socialization, employee adjustment and experience, and growth in organization‐based self‐esteem

One of the more important responsibilities for HRD professionals is to help employees fit into the organization. This fitting in, or adjustment, to the organization includes the skills to perform one's job, understanding the relationships of one's role to the broader organization, and feel...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Human resource development quarterly 2022-10, Vol.33 (3), p.297-319
Main Authors: Gardner, Donald G., Huang, Guo‐Hua (Emily), Pierce, Jon L., Niu, Xiongying (Peter), Lee, Cynthia
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adjustment
employee adjustment
Employees
Job performance
onboarding
Organizational research
Organizational socialization
organization‐based self‐esteem
Peers
Professionals
role clarity
Self esteem
social acceptance
Socialization
task mastery
Work skills
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:One of the more important responsibilities for HRD professionals is to help employees fit into the organization. This fitting in, or adjustment, to the organization includes the skills to perform one's job, understanding the relationships of one's role to the broader organization, and feeling accepted by one's peers. Onboarding, or more broadly, organizational socialization, is a proven practice that enhances employee adjustment through learning and development. Prior research reveals favorable relationships between organizational socialization (OS) practices and employee adjustment. Much less is known about which aspects of OS the HRD professional should focus on, why employees are motivated to use the knowledge gained from socialization to improve job performance, or whether relationships discovered in past research on newcomers can or should be generalized to more experienced employees. The current research is based on the multidomain, continuous model of OS. Consistent with that model, we found that effective socialization enhances employee organizational adjustment, which subsequently raises their organization‐based self‐esteem (OBSE), and that OS has stronger relationships with adjustment for less experienced employees than those with more experienced employees. Our results also reveal that adjustment mediated growth in OBSE that accompanied the ongoing process of OS, and that employees who perceived higher levels of socialization had greater increases in OBSE. We discuss the implications of our results for HRD professionals in designing OS programs, particularly as they relate to the targeted employees, and the framing of the communications.
ISSN:1044-8004
1532-1096
DOI:10.1002/hrdq.21458