Berrin Erdogan

Organizational socialization and the practice of onboarding new hires are central human resources functions. However, traditional socialization theory and practice were built on assumptions that are increasingly misaligned with today's work context. We identified four current, emerging, and future work trends that characterize the evolving landscape surrounding organizational socialization: technological advancement, the expansion of remote work arrangements, rising societal loneliness and mental health challenges, and aging workforce demographics. Collectively, these trends have contributed to dramatic shifts in the context and performance of work, as well as the expectations that employees and organizations hold for one another. Accordingly, we argue that these shifts require a renewed examination of the organizational socialization process that reflects contemporary realities such as the move away from stable, physically co‐located, psychologically anchored work toward boundaryless, tech‐mediated, and transient work arrangements. Our review presents a future‐forward look at organizational socialization through the lens of these societal and workplace shifts. We identify newcomer adaptability and connection as emergent critical factors for the future of onboarding. Through this lens, we offer practical implications for human resource practice and invite future research that advances our understanding of organizational socialization in today's context.

This study explored the motivational and affective implications of perceived underqualification, specifically examining how it leads to increased levels of envy and help-seeking behaviors. We predicted that envy and help seeking behaviors would in turn indirectly relate to interpersonal deviance and task performance. We further hypothesized that two psychological resources, hope and self-efficacy, would moderate the relationships between perceived underqualification, envy, and help seeking. We tested our model with a sample of 149 medical school students who were undergoing a clinical rotation as well as their rotation coordinators at a university hospital located in northwestern Turkey. Data collection spanned four waves, from the first day of their rotation to the end of that one-month rotation. Results supported positive indirect effects between perceived underqualification and task performance via help seeking, and between perceived underqualification and interpersonal deviance via envy. Further, hope moderated the relationship between perceived underqualification and task performance via help seeking, and self-efficacy moderated the relationship between perceived underqualification and envy.

Decades of studies spanning multiple disciplines have provided insight into the critical role of loneliness in work contexts. In spite of this extensive research, a comprehensive review of loneliness and work remains absent. To address this gap, we conducted a multidisciplinary review of relevant theory and research and identified 213 articles reporting on 233 empirical studies from management, organizational psychology, sociology, medicine, and other domains to uncover why people feel lonely, how different features of work can contribute to feelings of loneliness, and the implications of employee loneliness for organizational settings. This enabled a critical examination of the distinct conceptualizations and operationalizations of loneliness that have been advanced and the theories underpinning this scholarship. We developed a comprehensive conceptual model that integrates cognitive discrepancy theory, the affect theory of social exchange, and evolutionary theory. This model elucidates the core antecedents, mediators, outcomes, moderators, and interventions forming the nomological network of work related loneliness, including cross-level influences within teams and among leaders. Our review also identifies a number of promising areas for future inquiry to improve our understanding and measurement of loneliness, the process of experiencing and managing loneliness in the workplace, and potential interventions to reduce it. Finally, we provide tangible guidance for organizations and practitioners on how to address and mitigate employee loneliness. Ultimately, our review underscores the complex nature of loneliness and work and establishes a foundation for advancing both scholarly discourse and organizational practices in this critical domain.

Despite consistent findings that stressed employees benefit from social support, these employees do not always have access to such support. We propose and test a conceptual model suggesting employee work stress will negatively affect supervisory career and psychosocial mentoring support. Drawing from social exchange theory, we predict this will indirectly affect employee career success (lower career satisfaction and promotability ratings, fewer promotions), and that the relationship between employee work stress and lower supervisory mentoring support can be explained by lower levels of work engagement experienced by, and attributed to, stressed employees. We tested our model across three studies. In Study 1, we collected four waves of multisource field data (254 employees, 127 managers, and company records) at a large postal organization in the United Kingdom (UK). Employee work stress was negatively related to supervisor career and psychosocial mentoring support, and indirectly affected career satisfaction and manager promotability ratings of employees via supervisor career mentoring support. Cross‐lagged panel analyses in a supplemental study additionally supported the proposed directionality of relationships. Study 2 included data across three waves from employees in Hong Kong (n = 137) and showed that employee work stress had indirect effects on supervisor career and psychosocial mentoring via lower employee engagement. In Study 3, using data from supervisors in the UK (n = 240) we showed that supervisor perceived employee stress had indirect effects on their provision of supervisor career and psychosocial mentoring support via lower perceived employee engagement.

The effective socialization of newcomers into organizations is critical for employee and organizational success. As such, ensuring successful onboarding has become even more pivotal for newcomer adjustment, performance, and retention. The literature has seen significant growth and incorporated new theoretical perspectives, such as resource-based approaches since the most recent comprehensive meta-analytic review of the literature. Therefore, we extended earlier reviews by presenting an updated model of the socialization process, reviewing the literature, and examining this updated model via meta-analysis. In all, we identified 256 studies that met our meta-analytic inclusion criteria, and 183 with sufficient k across construct categories were included in our meta-analysis. At the correlational level, we analyzed antecedents to proximal adjustment indicators and proximal adjustment to distal outcomes. We examined a potential moderator, whether the study took place in a horizontal-individualistic (HI) versus vertical-collectivistic (VC) culture. Last, we analyzed a path model to identify unique relationships between specific antecedents (age, full-time work experience, organizational tenure, proactive personality, information seeking, organizational tactics, insider mentoring/supporting), proximal adjustment indicators (social acceptance, role clarity, task mastery, perceived fit), and distal outcomes (job satisfaction, organizational commitment, turnover intentions, other-rated performance, and well-being). Our analyses uncover the role of proactive personality and proactive newcomer behaviors in newcomer adjustment and the importance of social acceptance for newcomers. They also identify perceptions of fit as an important but relatively under-examined adjustment indicator and newcomer well-being as an additional socialization outcome. We develop future directions for socialization theory and research methods.

During organizational entry, newcomers often draw upon internal resources like coworkers and supervisors to navigate their roles. Could external interactions with customers or patients hold the key to newcomer adjustment in certain job contexts? Our study, rooted in the conservation of resources theory, identifies a critical link between mistreatment from external parties and newcomer adjustment—a connection that is explained by rumination and work engagement. Through two studies involving new nurses in China (Study 1: four-wave cross-lagged panel design, N = 181; Study 2: four-wave time-lagged design, N = 198), we uncover that mistreatment from patients results in rumination among newcomers, leading to diminished task mastery and role clarity, as mediated by reduced work engagement. This ripple effect of external mistreatment persists even when accounting for internal mistreatment (abusive supervision and coworker incivility). Our results illustrate how negative interactions with external entities can hinder newcomer adjustment—a revelation with far-reaching implications for practitioners and future research.¹

Purpose: Transformational leadership (TFL) has been suggested to create positive changes in employees with the goal of developing them into leaders. The authors integrate this well-established leadership style with recent research on idiosyncratic deals (i-deals). The authors suggest TFL as a predictor of task and development-based i-deals, and propose i-deals as a mediating mechanism linking TFL to employee outcomes (job satisfaction, job stress and manager-rated performance).Design/methodology/approach: The authors used a time-lagged research design, and collected four waves of data from 140 employees and 78 leaders.Findings: TFL was found to be an important predictor of i-deals. I-deals predicted job satisfaction and job stress; and it mediated the relationship between TFL and these two employee outcomes. Yet, i-deals were not associated with employee performance and did not mediate the relationship.Originality/value: First, it shows that transformational leaders who consider employees' unique skills and support their professional growth are more likely to grant personalized arrangements. Second, drawing from social exchange theory, it illustrates that i-deals may act as a linkage between TFL and employee outcomes. The paper bridges leadership and i-deals literature to identify key leverage points through which leaders can enhance employee satisfaction, well-being and performance.