Adjusting to new work teams: Testing work experience as a multidimensional resource for newcomers

• Date: 01 May 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.1903
• Author: Jeremy M. Beus,Steven M. Jarrett,Aaron B. Taylor,Christopher W. Wiese
• Published date: 01 May 2014

Adjusting to new work teams: Testing work

experience as a multidimensional resource for

newcomers

JEREMY M. BEUS

1

*, STEVEN M. JARRETT

2

, AARON B. TAYLOR

3

AND CHRISTOPHER W. WIESE

4

1

Rucks Department of Management, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, U.S.A.

2

Select International, Inc., Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.

3

Independent Researcher, Worthington, Ohio, U.S.A.

4

University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida, U.S.A.

Summary The successful performance adjustment of team newcomers is an increasingly important consideration given

the prevalence of job-changing and the uncertainty associated with starting work in a new team setting. Con-

sequently, using sensemaking and uncertainty reduction theories as a conceptual basis, the present study

tested work experience as a potential resource for newcomer performance adjustment in teams. Specifically,

we tested work experience as a multidimensional predictor of both initial newcomer performance and the rate

of performance change after team entry. We tested hypotheses using longitudinal newcomer performance data

in the context of professional basketball teams. Although the traditional quantitative indicators of the length

and amount of work experience were not meaningfully associated with newcomer performance adjustment,

their interaction was. In addition, the qualitative indicator of newcomers’past transition experience revealed

a significant, positive association with the rate of newcomer performance improvement following team entry.

These results suggest that work experience is a meaningful facilitator of newcomer adjustment in teams and

emphasize the dual consideration of both quantitative and qualitative work experiences. The theoretical and

practical implications of these findings are discussed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Keywords: newcomer adjustment; work experience; socialization; job performance; teams

Although it was once common for workers to remain employed in the same organization and the same job for the

duration of their careers, today’s workers change jobs and organizations at a much higher rate (Hall, 2002;

O’Mahony & Bechky, 2006). In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the average American worker

changes jobs 11 times between the ages of 18 and 44 years (BLS, 2010). The increased frequency of job-changing

is noteworthy given the uncertainty and ambiguity associated with starting work in a new environment (Falcione &

Wilson, 1988; Lester, 1987; Louis, 1980).

Concomitant with the higher frequency of job-changing is the increased prevalence of teams in organizations.

Devine, Clayton, Philips, Dunford, and Melner (1999) estimated that approximately half of all US organizations

use some form of work team as part of their organizational structure, and this number is likely even higher today.

Consequently, the proximal socialization setting for many of today’s organizational newcomers is the team. Entering

an interdependent team setting has important implications for both newcomers and the teams in which they work,

given that newcomers’uncertainty during the adjustment process tends to reduce their job performance (Chao,

O’Leary-Kelly, Wolf, Klein, & Gardner, 1994; Ostroff & Kozlowski, 1992) and consequently their teams’perfor-

mance (Lewis, Belliveau, Herndon, & Keller, 2007). Thus, there is an increasing need for researchers and human

resource practitioners to consider factors that can aid newcomers’performance adjustment when entering new

*Correspondence to: Jeremy M. Beus, Rucks Department of Management, Louisiana State University, 2728 Business Education Complex, Baton

Rouge, Louisiana, 70803 U.S.A. E-mail: jbeus@lsu.edu

Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 09 October 2012

Revised 10 September 2013, Accepted 22 September 2013

Journal of Organizational Behavior, J. Organiz. Behav. 35, 489–506 (2014)

Published online 16 October 2013 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/job.1903

Research Article

teams. We define newcomer performance adjustment as the extent to which newcomers are able to perform core

tasks at satisfactory levels shortly following team entry.

The extant socialization literature has identified a number of individual and organizational factors that facilitate

newcomer adjustment to new work contexts (e.g., Jones, 1986; Kammeyer-Mueller & Wanberg, 2003; Morrison,

1993; Saks & Ashforth, 1997; Van Maanen & Schein, 1979). For example, meta-analytic evidence suggests that

both newcomer information seeking and varying organizational socialization tactics are positively associated with

proximal adjustment indicators such as role clarity and social integration (Bauer, Bodner, Erdogan, Truxillo, &

Tucker, 2007; Saks, Uggerslev, & Fassina, 2007). More recent studies have identified other factors including new-

comer personality traits and coworker developmental feedback as antecedents of newcomer adjustment (Harrison,

Sluss, & Ashforth, 2011; Li, Harris, Boswell, & Xie, 2011). An additional factor that has been widely theorized

to facilitate newcomer adjustment, but rarely considered empirically, is work experience—past events experienced

by individuals pertaining to the performance of a job (Quiñones, Ford, & Teachout, 1995). According to socializa-

tion theorists, work experience is a cognitive resource available to newcomers to help them adapt their performance

to a new context more effectively (Beyer & Hannah, 2002; Carr, Pearson, Vest, & Boyar, 2006; Jones, 1983; Louis,

1980). To the extent that this is true, work experience represents a particularly useful factor for human resource prac-

titioners to consider as a means of forecasting successful newcomer performance adjustment given that work expe-

rience can fairly readily be assessed in pre-hire or promotion contexts.

Despite the theoretical expectation that work experience facilitates newcomer performance adjustment, however,

empirical results have been mixed, particularly with regard to the effect of work experience on job performance. Job

performance is a telling indicator of newcomer adjustment because any newcomer’s performance should be reflec-

tive of proximal adjustment indicators such as task mastery, role clarity, and social integration (Bauer et al., 2007).

That is, it is reasonable to infer that a high performing newcomer is likewise one who has reduce d prior uncertainty

such that they have a more accurate understanding of the task, their specific role, and how they fit into the overall

team dynamic.

A study that specifically considered the effect of work experience on newcomer job performance found that work

experience was negatively associated with both self-rated and supervisor-rated performance (Adkins, 1995). Other

studies that have considered the association between work experience and job performance more broadly with

non-newcomers have reported inconsistent results. Whereas some studies have shown that work experience is

positively related to job performance (McDaniel, Schmidt, & Hunter, 1988; Quiñones et al., 1995; Schmidt, Hunter,

& Outerbridge, 1986), others have found negative or null associations between the two constructs (Castilla, 2005;

Medoff & Abraham, 1980). One explanation that has been offered to reconcile these mixed results is the notion that

irrelevant or maladaptive prior experiences may at times hinder an individual’s ability to adjust to a new role and

new organizational dynamics (Dokko, Wilk, & Rothbard, 2009).

It is important to note, however, that these studies of newcomers and non-newcomers alike only considered work

experience in terms of time spent in a job or career (e.g., months, years). Operationalizing work experience solely in

terms of time is limiting and fails to capture more qualitative indicators of experience that add depth and meaning to

the work experience construct (Beyer & Hannah, 2002; Quiñones et al., 1995; Tesluk & Jacobs, 1998). To test work

experience as a resource for newcomer performance adjustment, we operationalized newcomer performance adjust-

ment using two indicators: initial newcomer performance levels and the rate of performance change following team

entry, with higher levels of either of these indicators suggesting successful newcomer performance adjustment. The

examination of both of these indicators of newcomer performance adjustment represents a more appropriate concep-

tualization that few studies have been able to test (cf. Chen, 2005).

Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to contribute to the extant socialization literature by testing newcomer

work experience as a multidimensional predictor of initial newcomer performance levels and the rate of performance

change following team entry to better determine the extent to which past work experiences affect newcomers’per-

formance adjustment. We tested our hypotheses using a sample of professional basketball team newcomers. Profes-

sional basketball teams exemplify action teams or highly interdependent teams of experts that engage in time-limited

performance episodes involving adversaries, audiences, or challenging environments (Sundstrom, McIntyre,

490 J. M. BEUS ET AL.

Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Organiz. Behav. 35, 489–506 (2014)

DOI: 10.1002/job