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In this paper, we suggest a contemporary view of learning during the process of organizational socialization. The relationship between learning and socialization is implicit in much of the existing socialization literature. In an attempt to make this research more explicit, we suggest a theoretical approach to the actual learning processes that underlie workers’ socialization experiences. In order to accomplish this, we review previous work on socialization, information seeking and feedback seeking during socialization, and learning. In doing so we describe the learning process that underlies socialization, highlighting the beginning of the process, the role of information during the process, and integrating three different types of learning (planned, deutero, and meta) into the process of organizational socialization. In addition, we also discuss the implications of these three types of learning during the process of socialization and directions in future research on the socialization process.

Prior research finds that auditors can be distinctively committed to multiple workplace targets (e.g., their audit firm, supervisors, profession, and clients). This study investigates an underexamined target of auditor commitment – engagement teams. Given that these teams are responsible for performing key audit tasks for clients and external stakeholders, we argue that auditors' commitment to their team can affect auditor behavior. Using a sample of 121 auditors, our results indicate that quality social exchange relationships between individual auditors and their engagement teams, activated by perceptions of team fairness, and reciprocated with team commitment, are associated with beneficial group-oriented behavior. Specifically, we posit and find that perceived team fairness predicts perceived team support, perceived team support predicts team commitment, and team commitment predicts citizenship behavior directed toward the engagement team (e.g., helping the team by taking on extra responsibilities during an audit). We also find that the social exchange proxies of perceived team support and team commitment sequentially mediate the positive effect of perceived team fairness on team citizenship behavior, and that team commitment is a stronger predictor of team citizenship behavior than auditors' commitment to their firm.

Purpose – The adoption of performance measurement and evaluation systems comprising nonfinancial measures has rendered the investigation of behavioral consequences of such measures an increasingly important research issue. The purpose of this study is to investigate the process by which the use of nonfinancial measures affects employees’ perceptions of procedural fairness. It proposes that the effects of nonfinancial measures on procedural fairness are indirect through the mediating variables of (1) job relevant information and (2) role clarity.

Methodology – Data collected from a survey of 276 managers in different functional areas are used to test the models. The data are analyzed using structural equation modeling (Partial Least Square).

Findings – Results from structural models indicate that the use of nonfinancial measures has a positive impact on job relevant information, role clarity, and procedural fairness. In addition, the findings suggest that the use of nonfinancial measures is indirectly related to procedural fairness through job relevant information and role clarity. Specifically, the results indicate that the use of nonfinancial measures affects job relevant information. Job relevant information then influences role clarity. Role clarity, in turn, is positively related to procedural fairness.

Value of paper – This study provides systematic empirical evidence on how the use of nonfinancial measures for performance measurement and evaluation can affect employee perceptions of procedural fairness. It helps organizations to understand how this process occurs and provides them with some assurance that the adoption of nonfinancial measures may be beneficial particularly through the higher information content of such measures and the consequential enhancement of employee role clarity and perception of fairness. By studying the effects of nonfinancial measures, in isolation, this study also helps to demonstrate to organizations that some of the beneficial effects on employee outcomes found by prior management accounting studies involving a combination of financial and nonfinancial measures may be achievable from the use of nonfinancial measures alone without the need of financial measures. This may assist organizations in designing simpler performance measurement systems.

This chapter briefly reviews findings from recent socialization research to provide an updated view of the socialization literature. To help advance the literature, this chapter then takes an instructional system approach, viewing socialization fundamentally as a process of learning about a new or changed role and the environment surrounding that role. As such, attention will first be given to further understanding exactly what needs to be learned during socialization. In doing so, an expanded socialization content typology is presented. In addition, two other components are added to this typology to reflect the fact that (a) each of those content dimensions needs to be learned relative to different organizational levels (e.g., job, work group, unit, organization) and (b) socialization occurs over several months and there are temporal considerations relating to the different socialization content dimensions. This chapter then examines how to best facilitate the learning of that expanded socialization content. The Gagné-Briggs theory of instruction is used in connecting socialization content with the means of learning that content. The socialization and orienting activities commonly used by organizations to help new employees in the adjustment process are also identified and then mapped onto the learning outcomes they could best help facilitate. Finally, the conceptual, measurement, and research needs suggested by these extensions to the socialization literature are identified.

Multidimensional fit (MDF) has been coined as “elusive” and relevant to an individual’s social identity and self-concept, unfolding over time as individuals assess their fit relative to Person-Organization, Person-Vocation, Person-Job, and Person-Team Fit. In this chapter, the literature as it relates to the refugee employment journey, MDF, and HRM practices that facilitate or inhibit MDF is reviewed. Furthermore, in this study, the process-oriented view of the refuge path highlights the complexity of their experience, noting an array of antecedents as they relate to country, host country and individual differences, interventions through NGOs, refugee resettlement agencies, and organizations, as well as the less explored entrepreneurial path. These diverse paths and the process of finding fit, and the obstacles refugees face, are viewed through the lens of shocks and reassessment of MDF throughout their journey. Finally, the study’s outcomes illustrate individual wellbeing factors, organizational level benefits, as well as community level benefits to MDF.

Economic stressors such as job insecurity, job loss, unemployment, and underemployment cause severe difficulties for the workers affected, their families, organizations, and societies overall. Consequently, most past research has taken a thoroughly negative perspective on economic stress, addressing its diverse negative consequences and the ways that people try to cope with them. And even when following the advice provided by the scientific literature, people affected by economic stress will usually end up being off worse than they were before the onset of the stressor.

The current chapter pays credit to this perspective yet also tries to counterbalance it with an alternative one. While acknowledging the vast amount of literature outlining the negative consequences of economic stress on peoples’ well-being and careers, some literature also points at opportunities for a more positive perspective. More specifically, we argue that affected people can use a wide repertoire of behaviors for handling their current situation. Of particular promise in this regard is the concept of career adaptability, generally defined as the ability to change to fit into new career-related circumstances. Indeed, studies show that under certain conditions, career adaptability can facilitate people's search for not just any job but for a qualitatively better job, thus breaking through the spiral of losses usually associated with economic stress.

For the purpose of this argument, we link career adaptability to the concept of proactive coping, analyzing how and under which conditions career adaptability may present a contextualized form of proactive coping. We then address known personal and situational antecedents of career adaptability and show how career adaptability may be fostered and trained among different types of job seekers. We end this chapter with a discussion of open questions as well as directions for future research.

This chapter focuses on the barriers women of color (WOC) in the professoriate face in their pursuit of tenure and promotion and provides selected strategies that build bridges for their success. It draws on critical race theory (CRT) to identify structural as well as individual changes that must be made in academe. The chapter addresses selected strategies for African-American, Latina American, and Asian/Pacific American women to successfully traverse the perilous road from untenured assistant professor to tenured full professor. The Newcomer Adjustment framework of the Organizational Socialization Model (OSM; Bauer, Bodner, Erdogan, Truxillo, & Tucker, 2007) is used as a systematic approach to addressing barriers and building bridges for WOC in the professoriate. Gaps in the research are also identified.

Research on budget-based performance evaluation traditionally predicts that the use of accounting performance measures (APM) in complex, dynamic, and uncertain situations results in dysfunctional managerial attitudes and behaviors. Although this suggests that such situations require the use of subjective performance measures (SPM), empirical evidence is inconclusive, as APM, rather than SPM, have been found to also have a negative effect on managerial ambiguity. This suggests that APM may be more, rather than less, appropriate than SPM in situations of high uncertainty. This paper explores whether acknowledgement of different types of uncertainty may explain these apparently conflicting research findings. It develops hypotheses that predict differential interactions between the environmental uncertainty and task uncertainty and APM and SPM on managerial ambiguity. These hypotheses are tested using survey data from 250 managers in 11 organizations. Tests using moderated regression analysis provide support for the existence of different interactions between uncertainty and the use of performance measures, and provide reconciliation for the opposing findings in the extant literature.

The preponderance of studies that rely on self-report for both independent (e.g. stressors) and dependent (e.g. well-being) variables is often deplored, as it creates problems of common method variance, which may lead to inflated, or even spurious, correlations and predictions. It is sometimes suggested that alternative measures should yield more “objective” information on the phenomena under investigation. We discuss this issue with regard to: (a) observational measures of working conditions; (b) physiological measures of strain; and (c) event-based “self-observation” on a micro-level. We argue that these methods are not necessarily “objective.” Like self-report, they are influenced by a plethora of factors; and measurement artifacts can easily be produced. All this can make their interpretation quite difficult, and the conclusion that lack of convergence with self-report automatically invalidates self-report is not necessarily warranted. Especially with regard to physiological measures, one has to keep in mind that they refer to a different response level that follows its own laws and is only loosely coupled with psychological responses. Therefore, replacement is not a promising way to get more reliable estimates of stressor-strain relationships. We argue instead that each method contains both substantive and error variance, and that a combination of various methods seems more auspicious. After discussing advantages and pitfalls of observational, physiological, and self-observational measures, respectively, we report empirical examples from our own research on each of these methods, which are meant to illustrate both the advantages and the problems associated with them. They strengthen the overall conclusion that there is no “substitute” for self-report (which often is necessary to be able to interpret data from other methods, most notably physiological ones). They also illustrate that collecting such data is quite cumbersome, and that a number of conditions have to be carefully considered before using them, and we report some problems we encountered in this research. Altogether, we conclude that self-report measures, if carefully constructed, are better than their reputation, but that the optimal way is to complement them with other measures.