Prof. Anthony Nyberg (University of South Carolina)
Date: Tuesday, July 25th
Time: 10:00am - 11:30am
Location: Prof.-Huber-Platz 2, LEHRTURM-VU107
Title: “You Are Who You Work With: The Influence of Social Context on Newcomer Performance”
Abstract: The effective socialization of newcomers is a critical concern for organizations. While organizational socialization has been studied from the perspective of both the newcomer and the organization, theoretically integrating these perspectives and providing actionable advice to organizations has remained challenging due to oversight of the social context in which these perspectives collide. In this study, we extend theory on organizational socialization by building and testing a model that focuses on newcomers’ social context. Specifically, we focus on one of the most salient yet overlooked attributes of newcomers’ social context, incumbent performance. In doing so, we explain the mechanisms for how and why social interactions with incumbents shape newcomers’ initial performance. We also recognize the multidimensionality of these social environments by attending to features of social contexts including the variability of incumbents’ performance, group size, and the number of additional newcomers in the group. We test our hypotheses in a warehouse ecommerce setting, where one author was a researcher-participant. Employees are effectively randomly assigned to new units, and we use objective measures of newcomer performance. Our study advances theory about newcomer socialization and provides actionable insights to organizations regarding how to maximize the performance of newcomers.