Management Research Seminar Series, conducted by the Department of Economics and Business, aims to bring accomplished researchers in the Management field to share their current research projects to facilitate an academic discussion, enhance knowledge, and discover potential connections. The series is designed for the academic audience, i.e., the Faculty and MA, PhD students; however, anyone interested in the series is welcome to attend.
On April 1, Dr. Bin Ma from IE Business School will join the Management Research Seminar Series. The event will be on Zoom. For details and the zoom link, please email senyuza@ceu.edu or Attri_Pardeep@phd.ceu.edu.
Title: LMX Attribution and its Influence on Newcomer Socialization
Abstract
Socialization research suggests that socialization aims to achieve two key objectives: increasing the newcomer’s task mastery and promoting their social adjustment. However, newcomers often face trade-offs in prioritizing these two goals due to limited resources and time. Drawing on sense-making theory and an interactionist perspective of newcomer socialization, we extend previous research that has examined how different types of socialization tactics impact socialization outcomes. Specifically, we posit that newcomers’ attributions for the quality of their leader-member exchange (task- and relation-oriented) are positively associated with their perceptions of the organizational norms of the new workplace as either task-oriented or relation-oriented. In turn, this affects their investment in task- and relation-oriented socialization tactics and their achievement of task mastery and social adjustment outcomes. Moreover, we also posit that newcomers’ engagement in task- (or relation-) oriented socialization tactics is negatively associated with social adjustment (task mastery). Finally, we examine the role of supervisors’ organizational status as a moderator of these effects. We find empirical support for these hypotheses in a three-wave longitudinal investigation tracking the socialization process of 450 newcomers across various workplaces in China.