Exploring proactive actions and supportive actions in organizational socialization

Abstract

The process of learning the necessary behaviors and attitudes for achieving a new role and adapting to the new working environment in an organization is defined as organizational socialization. In the socialization process, newly-hired employees, also called “newcomers,” show proactive individuals and take proactive actions to achieve successful socialization outcomes. The managers who are the immediate supervisors of the newly-hired employees provide support through taking supportive actions. The study explores specific actions and processes taken by the two important roles in engineering organizations during the socialization process. The context of the current study is specifically in the aerospace and defense (A&D) industry. The present study aims to develop a more in-depth understanding of engineering newcomers’ proactive actions and engineering managers’ supportive actions. The goals of the studies are: 1) identifying the proactive actions and supportive actions with detailed interpretation; 2) indicating these actions function in which domains in socialization; 3) revealing the similarities and differences between newcomers’ and managers’ opinions behind the proactive actions and supportive actions. The study is designed as a qualitative study following Morrison’s framework of four socialization domains in which newcomers complete primary tasks: Role Clarity, Task Mastery, Acculturation, and Social Integration. The data have been collected from semi-structured interviews and analyzed in three main sections by applying the open coding process. In the first section, the study investigated the perspective of engineering managers. There were seven engineering managers interviewed, and nine supportive actions were identified in the four domains. The managers’ expectations of newcomers’ proactive actions in each domain were identified either. In the second section, twenty-six newly-hired engineers were interviewed. There were seventeen proactive actions identified from the newly-hired engineers’ perspective. In the third section, the supportive actions mentioned by the managers and proactive actions stated by the newly-hired engineers were compared. The comparison results show that more than half of newcomers’ proactive actions were supported by managers’ supportive actions, but managers might not recognize some of the newcomers’ needs. Particularly, in Acculturation and Social Integration, newcomers and managers stated different opinions on learning resources and developing social relationships in the organization. The study addresses the literature as it expands the understanding of the organizational socialization process based on two perspectives: newcomers and managers in the specific context of engineering organizations. The study also discusses the benefits for stakeholders in Chapter 2, Chapter 3, and Chapter 4. The potential applications of the research results in the Human-computer Interaction field are discussed in Chapter 5. In addition, based on the research results, the recommended practices for engineering education in universities or colleges and engineering organizations are discussed in Chapter 6.