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The purpose of this paper is to compare newcomers’ perceptions on how employers structure the socialization process in the core and peripheral workforce and to explore the proactivity of these new hires in form of information seeking behavior.

The data of this study were collected from a German sample with 359 contingent and permanent new hires in skilled jobs.

The employment type was linked to both socialization tactics firms provided during organizational entry as well as information seeking of permanent and contingent newcomers. In addition, organizational tenure was positively linked with information seeking of both newly hired temporary agency workers and newcomers holding fixed-term contracts.

Since most of the participants worked for different employers, differences in socialization might also be caused by different organizational cultures. Future studies should compare the socialization of new permanent and new temporary workers on an inter-organizational and intra-organizational level.

For skilled jobs firms should offer long-term assignments for temporary agency workers, as they are associated with higher proactivity. Further, firms should intensify the socialization of newcomers holding longer-term work contracts, as these employees may tend to show lower proactivity.

A structured organizational entry of skilled temporary agency workers may represent a stepping stone for permanent employment due to improved work attitudes and behaviors.

This is the first study that examines employment characteristics as potential determinants of organizational socialization tactics. In addition, the study uses a German sample and therefore, follows recent calls for more research on organizational socialization in non-Anglo-Saxon work contexts.

Despite more than three decades of studies, the role of information‐seeking during organizational socialization remains ambiguous. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mediating role played by information‐seeking behaviour during the organizational socialization process.

Two different information‐seeking behaviors (implicit and explicit) were considered as mediators in the relationship between personality (extroversion, openness to experience, conscientiousness), organizational variables (LMX and POS) and organizational socialization outcomes (task mastery, social integration, role ambiguity, role conflict). Analysis carried out with SEM (structural equation modelling) on longitudinal survey data from 316 new police officers during their first six months of work showed interesting results regarding the two hypothesized mediators.

In particular, the results show that the two information‐seeking behaviors seem to be related to different paths that link personality and social‐exchange variables to organizational outcomes.

The paper's findings provide useful clues for a better understanding of the role of information‐seeking behaviour during the socialization process and highlight the importance of social support in predicting newcomer adjustment.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate how new healthcare professionals engage with information practices and information culture in their workplace, and the resulting influences on development and change.

A longitudinal study was conducted on a hospital training programme. Three series of focus groups provided data from 18 recently qualified nurses, supported by observations. Data were thematically analysed applying a framework consisting of six approaches to information use.

Newcomers take a proactive approach to seek, use and share scientific information, which is negotiated within existing information practices and organisational information culture. Their competencies, such as research skills, values, motivation and sense of integrity to use and share scientific information, often differ from those existing workplace practices. For this reason, they drive towards renewal and change.

Examination of organisational approaches to information use indicates clearly the necessity for improvements to meet the needs of information proactiveness and thus be able to face challenges and changes in an organisation.

This work sheds new light on newcomers’ information use, as they integrate into a workplace and interact with information practices and organisational approaches to information use. A significant contribution is the identification of the dynamics and interdependencies between newcomers’ individual agency in their way of seeking, using and sharing information, and the established community’s social agency promoting existing information practices and the organisational agency represented by information culture.

This qualitative study aims to understand young professional newcomers' experiences of communication processes in membership negotiation in their first workplace after graduation.

Instead of a one-time interview, the participants were contacted five to ten times during the three to ten months, beginning when they entered the workplace. The data were analyzed using a constant comparative method.

Three communication processes during membership negotiation were identified: developing reciprocity, seeking and perceiving acceptance and becoming an active member. To experience membership, newcomers need to achieve acceptance and engage in reciprocal communication in early interaction situations with managers and coworkers.

Only the experiences of newly graduated newcomers were studied. This study illustrates the communication processes and social interaction evolving in membership negotiation during newcomers' entry.

Organizations need to re-evaluate their short orientation programs to support membership negotiations in workplace communication.

By recognizing the communication processes during membership negotiation, the practices of newcomers' entry can be developed to support the membership development.

This study contributes to membership negotiation by showing how newcomers join the flow of membership negotiation through the processes of developing reciprocity, seeking and perceiving acceptance and becoming an active member.

The aim of this paper is threefold: to provide an overview of organizational socialization (OS) research; to present a new model of OS focusing on successful outcomes; and finally to draw from both of these to suggest practical steps for both organizations aiming to socialize newcomers, and for newcomers themselves.

A summary literature review of the OS literature post‐entry, focusing on organizational, insider and newcomer actions.

The literature is used to develop and propose a new model of OS success, with five OS success indicators. Testable relationships are proposed between these indicators and both five learning domains and five learning sources.

The research model has not been tested empirically. Further, the fifth success indicator, external representation, is a new and untested concept in the OS literature.

The paper provides a model that managers and newcomers may find useful to successfully negotiate the OS process. Further, the third section of the manuscript extensively discusses practical implications from the model and more broadly from the initial literature review.

The model proposed is novel and raises the important issue of appropriate OS success indicators. New propositions are made regarding relationships between learning sources and domains with these success indicators. This testable model is a valuable resource for researchers. Further, for managers, whether newcomers themselves or responsible for newcomers, the model provides a framework for considering what they are aiming to achieve and how they might get there.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance of a number of factors in newcomers' psychological contract development.

The approach taken is a literature review with the development of a conceptual model.

The paper contributes to the psychological contract literature by adopting a sensemaking perspective and focusing on the role of newcomers' pre‐entry expectations and emotions on the psychological contract creation process. The authors also discuss the differential role of contract makers and facilitators and the modes they employ to influence newcomers' psychological contract creation.

Psychological contract research has emphasized the consequences of psychological contract breach and violation. The paper's aim is to direct attention at understanding the psychological contract in its very initial stages. The authors discuss implications for research and practice on managing psychological contract creation.

This study aims to focus on newcomers’ learning strategies when they perceive organizational socialization support to be lacking, and on interpersonal characteristics that insiders should possess to support the newcomers’ proactive behaviors in this context.

Data were collected through 14 face-to-face, in-depth semi-structured interviews and analyzed with a conventional content analysis method (Paillé and Mucchielli, 2013), involving first a thematic analysis and afterward, a conceptual analysis using MaxQDA11©.

The authors’ analysis highlights that when newcomers perceive the formal organizational socialization support as lacking, they regulate their proactive behaviors by seeking indirect guidance, and more precisely, by engaging in informal interactions with insiders likely to help them socialize. These interactions can have a cost in terms of self-image, so newcomers regulate their proactive behaviors by looking for insiders perceived to be psychologically safe, even if they have to look for them in other working contexts.

Considering the regulation process of newcomers’ proactive behaviors according to their perceptions, human resources management should focus on those perceptions and develop a blended learning approach including formal learning programs, as well as individualized support to facilitate on-the-job learning and respond to personal needs. Special consideration should also be given to interpersonal skills displayed by insiders.

The originality of the study is the use of a qualitative methodology focusing on newcomers’ main learning strategy according to their perception of organizational socialization support and the psychological safety climate. The limitations of the authors’ work are the size of the study population and the fact that part of the interviewees were successfully socialized by reaching 15 months on their new post at the point where the interviews were conducted.

Socialization is one of the fundamental processes that define how collectivities emerge. Socialization underpins the social structures that shape not only how social actors interact in community but also the boundaries of action and the rules of engagement. In the context of organizations, socialization is a process that significantly shapes organization in the way core practices shape how things are done and why they are done in particular ways. This emphasis on consistency within and between practices is seen to be greatly facilitated by specific practices like staff induction. The purpose of this paper is to review the current conceptual and empirical research on staff induction as a process of organizational socialization and outlines some of the areas for future research particularly if a social practice perspective is adopted.

The paper presents a systematic review of the relevant literature on organizational socialization and staff induction and outlines themes to which the debate can usefully be extended.

This paper focuses on how staff induction practices provide valuable insights about how social agents (especially newcomers) get socialized in organizations.

This paper provides a foundation for the various staff induction practices that other papers in this issue will be presenting. By outlining the current debate and insights from previous empirical research on staff induction, the objective is to extend the debate by outlining some new avenues for research that papers in the special issue both respond to and further explicate.

This paper explores staff induction and organizational socialization as a practice that can provide new insights into the dynamics of social interaction within organizations.