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Despite the increasingly growing empirical research on leader humor, the critical issue of how and when leader humor affects newcomer adjustment was largely overlooked. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between leader humor and newcomer adjustment. Based on social information processing theory, the authors identify newcomers' role breadth self-efficacy (RBSE) as the mediator and suggest that newcomers' cognitive flexibility moderates the effects.

Data were obtained from a 2-wave sample of 195 newcomers. The authors utilized the PROCESS procedure developed by Hayes to assess the hypothesized moderated mediation model.

The findings showed that leader humor could boost newcomers' RBSE which, in turn, was beneficial to newcomer adjustment. Besides, newcomers' cognitive flexibility plays a moderating role in the relationship between leader humor and newcomers' RBSE.

This study utilized a cross-sectional research design, making the design difficult to obtain causal conclusions. Moreover, the data were all based on self-reports from newcomers, which may raise a concern of common method bias.

This paper extends the literature on leader humor and newcomer adjustment by treating RBSE as the mediator and newcomers' cognitive flexibility as the moderator. This study is one of several empirical studies to test the link between leader humor and newcomer adjustment.

Substantial research has examined the pivotal role of ethical leadership in generating employee outcomes. To date, though, little is known about the relationship between ethical leadership and newcomers' adjustment. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to this gap by examining the effect of ethical leadership on newcomers' adjustment. In doing so, the authors highlighted positive emotions of newcomers as a mediating mechanism that explains the aforementioned association.

Data were drawn from a two-wave sample of 271 newcomers. The hypotheses were tested by using hierarchical regression analyses and Hayes' PROCESS macro.

The results demonstrated that ethical leadership affects employees' positive emotions which, in turn, positively relates to newcomers' adjustment. Additionally, newcomers' social comparison orientation moderated the effect of ethical leadership on newcomers' positive emotions.

The research uses a correlational research design, making it difficult to derive causal inferences from the data. Moreover, the data we obtained on the variables were all based on employees' self-reports, which might inflate the relationship between some of the variables.

To the best of the knowledge, this is the first study that illustrates the role of ethical leadership in enhancing both newcomers’ positive emotions and adjustment.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the potential effects of organizational socialization on organizational-level outcomes and to demonstrate that organizational socialization is an important human resource (HR) practice that should be included in research on strategic human resource management (SHRM) and should be part of a high-performance work system (HPWS).

This paper reviews the research on SHRM and applies SHRM theory and the ability-motivation-opportunity model to explain how organizational socialization can influence organizational outcomes. The implications of psychological resource theories for newcomer adjustment and socialization are described and socialization resources theory is used to explain how organizational socialization can influence different indicators of newcomer adjustment.

An integration of SHRM theory and organizational socialization research indicates that organizational socialization can influence organizational outcomes (operational and financial) through newcomer adjustment (human capital, motivation, social capital, and psychological capital variables) and traditional socialization/HR outcomes such as job satisfaction, organizational commitment, job performance and reduced turnover.

In this paper the authors describe the socialization resources that organizations can use to facilitate newcomer adjustment to achieve newcomer and organizational outcomes.

This is one of the first papers to integrate the organizational socialization literature with SHRM theory and to explain how organizational socialization can influence organizational outcomes.

Substantial research has examined the pivotal role of supervisor positive humor in generating employee outcomes. To date, though, little is known about the relationship between supervisor humor and newcomers’ adjustment. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to this gap by examining the effect of supervisor positive humor on newcomers’ adjustment. In doing so, the authors highlighted relational identification with the supervisor as a mediating mechanism that explains the aforementioned association.

Data were drawn from 117 newcomers. In order to collect the data the authors used the snowball method. Also, hierarchical regression analysis was conducted.

The results demonstrated that supervisor positive humor affects employees’ relational identification with the supervisor which, in turn, positively relates to newcomers’ adjustment.

Data were collected using a cross-sectional design and, therefore, the authors cannot directly assess causality. Moreover, the authors used self-report measures which may strengthen the causal relationships.

To the best of the knowledge, this is the first study that illustrates the role of supervisor humor in enhancing both newcomers’ relational identification and adjustment.

Formal orientation programs play a potentially important role in newcomer adjustment, yet research aimed at understanding and improving the effects of these interventions has stagnated in recent years. The purpose of this chapter is to facilitate a redirection of researchers’ attention to such programs, and to suggest ways to integrate this body of research with recent developments in socialization and training literatures.

The majority of organizational newcomers have prior work experience. Organizational socialization tactics are less effective for such “experienced newcomers”, relative to graduate newcomers. Hence experienced newcomers tend to rely on their own actions to become socialized. The aim of this article is to assess and potentially extend the range of adjustment strategies identified as being used by experienced newcomers themselves to achieve positive adjustment.

Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with 86 experienced newcomers entering a professional services organization.

Nineteen strategies emerged, with seven newly identified in this research. These are compared with strategies found in past research.

HR, and the managers and colleagues of newcomers can use the strategies identified and categorized here to encourage newcomers to use organizationally‐appropriate behaviors. Newcomers can use these strategies to help themselves achieve their own adjustment goals.

There is an increasing focus on newcomer proactive behavior in organizational socialization research, yet there are few empirically grounded developments of newcomer adjustment strategies. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to focus on what experienced newcomers report doing to help themselves adjust.

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.

This study aims to explore and classify the fragmentary findings of previous studies and improve understanding of the overall roles of supervisors in newcomer organizational socialization (NOS) and their relationships to NOS outcomes.

The study chiefly involves undertaking a literature review, with an emphasis on the perspective of human resource development (HRD). A structured literature review was conducted to identify and select articles through the Web of Science database.

Five important roles of supervisors during NOS – supporting training transfer, providing information, clarifying newcomers’ roles, facilitating sensemaking and providing feedback – were revealed from an examination of extant work. These roles markedly influence five different components of newcomers’ adjustment: task mastery, role clarification, organizational knowledge, social identification and social integration.

Although the concept of NOS used in this paper did not include all meanings of organizational socialization, the findings proposed key areas that require further study to enhance the understanding of supervisors’ roles for NOS.

The literature review suggests key efforts that supervisors should pursue to enhance the efficacy of newcomers’ adjustment. HRD professionals can use this information to design supervisor training programs aimed at enhancing supervisors’ knowledge and skills for successful NOS.

Studies have reported that supervisors markedly impact NOS and ultimately a newcomer’s success or failure. Relatively little work, however, has investigated how supervisors’ roles in the NOS process can enhance newcomers’ successful NOS outcomes.

Despite the increase of recent immigrant newcomers (RINs) into the workforce over the past few years, many employers still face the challenge of successfully integrating RINs into the workplace. To this end, the purpose of this paper is to propose customized socialization tactics for RINs and highlight the role of RINs’ adjustment strategies in order to facilitate their workplace adjustment.

Drawing on immigrants, socialization, and diversity literatures, the paper develops a conceptual model of the socialization process for RINs and advances propositions to be empirically tested.

The paper proposes that customized socialization tactics by organizations and adjustment strategies by RINs would facilitate RINs’ socialization process by increasing their social integration and role performance, the factors which would ultimately help in their workplace adjustment.

The proposed customized socialization tactics add to the extant socialization literature by highlighting the crucial role firms can play in RINs’ socialization process. Additionally, the paper highlights an important role of RINs in their own socialization process.

Organizations need to employ new, different socialization tactics to help integrate RINs in the workplace. RINs may find the research outcomes useful in acknowledging their own role for successful workplace integration.

This paper presents a new way of looking at organizational socialization tactics for RINs while highlighting a role of RINs themselves, and concludes by discussing theoretical, practical, and societal implications for organizations employing RINs.

Although work engagement has become an important topic in management, relatively little attention has been given to newcomers’ work engagement in the socialization literature. The purpose of this paper is to explain how newcomers’ work engagement can fluctuate during the first year of organizational entry and the role of organizational socialization in developing and maintaining high levels of newcomers’ work engagement.

A review of the socialization literature indicates that uncertainty reduction theory has been the basis of research on socialization tactics and newcomer information-seeking both of which function by providing newcomers with information to reduce uncertainty. Socialization resources theory is used to develop a new pathway to newcomer socialization which focuses on providing newcomers with resources during the first year of organizational entry and socialization.

The uncertainty reduction pathway to newcomer socialization is narrow and limited because it primarily focuses on minimizing and reducing the negative effects of job demands rather than on providing newcomers with resources that are necessary to facilitate work engagement and socialization.

Organizations can use newcomers’ work engagement maintenance curves to map and track fluctuations in newcomers’ work engagement during the first year of organizational entry and they can conduct an audit of socialization resources to determine what resources are required to develop and maintain high levels of newcomers’ work engagement.

This paper describes newcomer work engagement maintenance curves and explains how socialization resources can be used to develop and maintain high levels of newcomers’ work engagement. A model of a new pathway to newcomer socialization is developed in which socialization resources, personal resources, and job demands influence newcomers’ work engagement and socialization outcomes.