Search results

This study aims to contribute to a better understanding of organizational strategies, attitudes and supports that can help people with intellectual disabilities to access competitive jobs through supported employment.

A multiple case study was carried out based on an intentional sampling involving the coworker mentors of six people with intellectual disabilities currently working in standardized environments. Semi-structured interviews were performed with the participants, and an inductive thematic analysis was used for data analysis.

The study identified five critical factors in the work of people with intellectual disabilities in standardized work environments, which potentially could act as facilitators or as obstacles, depending on how they were managed. The study also identified two key factors that acted mainly as facilitators and one as an obstacle.

The study reveals the existence of factors that sometimes act as facilitators and sometimes as obstacles, depending on how they are managed by the company leaders or the disabled worker himself.

Although research regarding socialization processes recognizes the importance of organizational identification for newcomer adjustment outcomes, it has less frequently considered the impact of newcomer identification with targets external to the organization. This study aims to investigate whether relational identification with identities external to the organization can be beneficial for socialization outcomes, a relationship the authors describe through the conservation of resources theory. At a time when newcomers are expending resources and may not have a support system inside the organization, important identities may foster success through building a resource base of support available to the newcomer.

Two studies were conducted with newcomers, both groups responded to multi-wave surveys. The authors conducted an initial study with undergraduate students (n = 45) in their first semester of college and a second study with working individuals employed full time in their first year in a new organization (n = 148).

Relational identification with identities external to the organization is positively related to job engagement through the dual mediation of social support and psychological well-being. The results indicate that these external resources encourage well-being and free newcomers to invest in becoming physically, emotionally and cognitively engaged with their new jobs.

The results suggest that organizations may wish to take care in helping newcomers maintain strong relational identities outside the organization while becoming connected with their new organization.

The findings suggest that external relational identities are a neglected and important element influencing the socialization process.

Youth and young adults with emotional and/or behavioral difficulties (EBD) face particularly difficult challenges in their efforts to fit into adult roles and functions. The purpose of this chapter is to assist providers, educators, and administrators from the mental health, education, child welfare, justice/corrections, and adult service system sectors understand (a) a practice for improving the progress and outcomes for young people in transition, and (b) how this practice model is implemented in communities to impact the lives of youth in transition to adulthood. This is accomplished in two major parts in this chapter. The first part provides an overview of the Transition to Independence Process (TIP) model, a description of its status as an evidence-supported practice, and tools and strategies that support its implementation in communities and regions across North America. The TIP model is further illustrated through a description of how it is applied with a young person. The second part of the chapter provides an overview of implementation science, a description of how its strategies and tools can guide the implementation of an intervention or model; and an illustration of a large-scale TIP implementation initiative with collaboratives of agencies and schools. This chapter concludes with implications regarding the importance of having effective transition-to-adulthood models; and ensuring the implementation and sustainability of these to improve the progress and outcomes of youth and young adults with EBD.

Frontline employees face constant emotional demands in the course of providing services to their customers, which can impact job engagement. This study aims to investigate the influence of emotional labor (surface and deep acting) and job resources (having a mentor and availability of expressive emotional network resources) on employees’ customer orientation and their relationship to three dimensions of job engagement: vigor, absorption and dedication.

Using data collected from food service providers, a conceptual model based on the job demands–resources theory is developed and tested.

Findings show that having a mentor and expressive emotional network resources increases customer orientation, which in turn increases vigor, absorption and dedication. However, surface acting negatively affects customer orientation, which indirectly reduces job engagement.

Consistent with the main tenet of the job-demands and resources theory, it was found that surface acting reduces engagement, whereas job resources (expressive emotional network resources and mentorship) boost engagement. Moreover, the results suggest that the commercialization of human feelings still remains an important topic for service providers to consider during service interactions because its presence affects frontline service employee engagement levels.

The purpose of this paper is to identify extant training needs for preparing supervisors to support newcomers’ organizational socialization and to develop a research agenda concerning aspects that conduce to making supervisors efficacious in the process of organizational socialization.

A review of the literature on the development of socialization agents for organizational socialization generally indicates that relatively minimal research has been undertaken on this topic. Most articles have focused on the effects of organizational socialization on other variables – such as newcomers’ work outcomes, turnover intention and organizational commitment. The review was conducted in light of this phenomenon. It is based on the structured literature review method, per Rocco, Stein and Lee (2003).

Supervisor training is suggested as a means for enhancing organizational socialization. However, supervisor training is not often studied in organizational socialization research. Therefore, the verification of the impact of supervisor training on organizational socialization is required. Given the proposed research agenda, identifying the impact of supervisor training on different areas of organizational socialization domains and inspiring increased interest on supervisor training as an effective program for organizational socialization are logical outcomes.

The concept of socialization is used in broad areas of research, such as education, military and engineering. However, it was reviewed here vis-à-vis human resource development (HRD). Therefore, the focus was on the notion of organizational socialization, which is appropriate for employee training development. The concept of organizational socialization in this paper, therefore, was delimited, as it failed to include all meanings of socialization. This paper sought to review all studies related to organizational socialization. However, some research was not considered and, thus, not discussed in this paper. This was because of time and resource constraints. The author sorted previous studies by personal standards and, thus, may have inadvertently included non-germane or excluded relevant citations.

Supervisory training for organizational socialization can be proposed as a potential area for leading to an effective organizational socialization program. So HRD professionals should study further about the topic and develop such programs. Increased attention on supervisor training for organizational socialization may increase the number and quality of supervisor training programs. Such studies would augment HRD professionals’ knowledge about organizational socialization and eventually enhance performance in organizations.

This paper can expand the area in which social learning theory can be applied. According to Bandura and Walters (1977), the social learning theory posits that learning new behaviors can usually be acquired by observing and imitating others. This implies that newcomers emulate other organizational members to adapt to the organization and their assigned roles. In this process, supervisors can play a key role through showing them the appropriate behaviors, supporting their learning and providing appropriate feedback. Presumably, then, new employees may perform better if supervisors receive training on crucial socialization efforts.

Significantly, socialization agents are uniquely situated to greatly impact the organizational socialization process of newcomers. Among the socialization agents, supervisors garner enormous influence on newcomers’ organizational socialization. However, relatively few studies investigated the training of supervisors for organizational socialization.

For women in leadership, managing work and life obligations is essential, especially when leading in male dominated occupations such as STEM. This study examined social support and work-family integration/blurring to determine how women in leadership perceived these dynamics. By surveying STEM women leaders, this research explored work-life strategies and support resources used by women leaders to balance their work and non-work domains and promote their roles as leaders. Women leaders indicated difficulty delineating between work and personal roles and recognized informational and emotional support as most significant to their roles as leaders. Findings also indicated that most support came from spouses/significant others, female co-workers, and mentors outside the organization, respectively. These sources provided the support needed to maintain and progress in their roles as women leaders.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight a success story of an organization using web‐based mentoring and to provide details on how they did it.

This case study of CDW Corporation examines why and how an organization would implement web‐based mentoring.

Participation numbers in mentoring increased from 108 participants to 764. Costs were reduced by 96 percent. Co‐worker engagement survey results improved by 7‐9 percent in select areas.

The findings suggest: secure key stakeholder support; tie web‐based mentoring to key organizational initiatives; make it available to all; provide resources to participants; communicate often.

The paper shows how a web‐based mentoring program can be implemented and supported and why this could be so vital to an organization.

The purpose of this study was to better understand the more complex social, technical and personal socialization experiences of engineers when they started new jobs in Taiwan. Much of the research and practice on the socialization of newly hired employees is narrowly focused on newcomer learning.

The study is a qualitative, case study approach designed to collect in-depth data about the socialization experiences of engineers in Taiwan. Thirteen participants reported their experiences from when they began new jobs, and the researchers collected and analyzed data from semi-structured interviews. The analysis followed qualitative analysis methods for content analysis.

The findings indicated that interpersonal relationships are critical to successful socialization, and the relational structures encountered by newcomers reflect the broader culture of Confucianism and the social interactions of guanxi in the Taiwanese workplace. Three main dimensions of socialization emerged from the data referring to social, technical and personal learning experiences.

The findings identify what is working (mentoring) and what is not working well (training). Human Resource managers and supervisors of newcomers can take actions to better manage the multiple dimensions of socialization.

Unlike most studies of socialization in Asia, this study took an in-depth, qualitative look into the experiences of newcomers. What emerged from the analysis of the data was a framework composed of three interdependent dimensions of socialization experiences. The findings inform both managers and newly hired employees about socialization experiences and how they can be improved.

The purpose of this case study is to highlight the role of feedforward as a potential tool for managers in encouraging coworkers and subordinates to excel at their workplace performance.

Insights were captured through real-time observations made during three feedforward sessions conducted at regular intervals during the course of a six-month training intervention. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted with participants to gather individual perspectives.

The findings of the study showed positive results in feedforward as a mechanism to strengthen employee performance at the workplace. Participants also reported deeper involvement in the feedforward process as compared to the conventional feedback method.

The study has wider practical implications in the corporate world, as it provides managers with a practical tool to mentor subordinates and coworkers toward on-the-job performance. Feedforward is easy to apply and forward-looking in its approach.

Feedforward has applications in corporate environments as well as families, associations, and academic institutions. It offers immense value by fostering a climate of social support and mutual co-operation.

The feedforward exercise mentioned in the study is relevant on account of its applicability in various organizations across industries. It provides managers with an opportunity to receive and share insightful suggestions with coworkers in an open and transparent environment.

Building on relational inequality theory, this paper incorporates social capital as a device to trace the flow of resources through relationships originating within and beyond organizations. I draw on a survey of over 1,700 lawyers to evaluate key dynamics of social capital that shape earnings: bridging and bonding, reciprocity exchanges and sponsorship, and boundary maintenance. The findings show social capital lends a lift to law graduates through bridges to professional careers and sponsorship following job entry. Racial minorities, however, suffer a shortfall of personal networks to facilitate job searches, and once having secured jobs, minorities experience social closure practices by clients and colleagues that disadvantage them in their professional work. A sizeable earnings gap remains between racial minority and white lawyers after controlling for human and social capitals, social closure practices, and organizational context. This earnings gap is particularly large among racial minorities with more years of experience and those working in large law firms. The findings demonstrate the importance of identifying the interrelations that connect social network and organizational context to impact social inequality.