Injunctive and descriptive logics during newcomer socialization: The impact on organizational identification, trustworthiness, and self‐efficacy

• Author: Laura G. E. Smith,Neil Paulsen,Nicole Gillespie,Terrance W. Fitzsimmons,Victor J. Callan
• Date: 01 May 2017
• Published date: 01 May 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2131

Injunctive and descriptive logics during newcomer

socialization: The impact on organizational

identification, trustworthiness, and self-efficacy

LAURA G. E. SMITH

1

*, NICOLE GILLESPIE

2

, VICTOR J. CALLAN

2

,

TERRANCE W. FITZSIMMONS

2

AND NEIL PAULSEN

2

1

Department of Psychology, University of Bath, Claverton Down, Bath, BA2 7AY, U.K.

2

School of Business, University of Queensland, St. Lucia QLD 4072, Australia

Summary Failure to adjust to a new organization has major personal, team, and organizational costs. Yet, we know

little about how newcomers' pre-entry institutional assumptions influence and shape their subsequent

socialization. To address this issue, we propose and test a model examining whether the discrepancy

between newcomers' injunctive logics (pre-entry beliefs about what institutional practices ought to be)

and their descriptive logics (actual experience of these institutional practices) influences the development

of organizational identification, perceived organizational trustworthiness, and self-efficacy. We examined

the impact of discrepant logics in a healthcare context by surveying new staff on their first day of employ-

ment and then again six weeks later (N= 264). We found that when there was a negative discrepancy

between injunctive and descriptive logics (that is, when the prevailing logics did not match what

newcomers thought they ought to be), organizational identification and perceived organizational

trustworthiness decreased over time and consequently so did self-efficacy. The results highlight the

important role of institutional logics in shaping socialization processes and outcomes soon after

organizational entry. We conclude that histories and personal and professional moral codes provide

a background against which newcomers evaluate their new institutional, social, and work context.

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Keywords: organizational identification; trust; newcomer socialization; self-efficacy; institutional logics

To understand how employees make a successful transition to a new workplace, theorists have traditionally fo-

cused on the practical tactics that organizations use to promote the socialization of employees into their new

roles (Ashforth & Saks, 1996; Bauer, Bodner, Erdogan, Truxillo, & Tucker, 2007). While important, this focus

neglects the social-psychological processes that affect newcomers' transitions from one workplace to another. To

this end, scholars have independently suggested that institutional logics, and the development of organizational

identification and trust, play critical roles in successful socialization (Schaubroeck, Peng, & Hannah, 2013;

Smith, Amiot, Smith, Callan, & Terry, 2013; van der Werff & Buckley, in press; Taris, Feij, & Capel, 2006).

In this study, we combine these insights and processes to propose that any explanation of socialization should

indicate how organizational identification and perceived organizational trustworthiness (POT) develop with refer-

ence to newcomers' idiosyncratic pre-existing beliefs about the institutional, moral, social, and organizational

context. While past research offers a variety of mechanisms by which organizational identification and POT

can form, this prior research seldom acknowledges that these processes are influenced by beliefs formed prior

to organizational entry.

To take into account the fact that people with a variety of backgrounds and agendas join new organizations, we

test the impact of pre-entry beliefs about institutional logics on newcomer socialization. According to Battilana and

*Correspondence to: Laura G. E. Smith, Department of Psychology, University of Bath, Claverton Down, Bath, BA2 7AY, U.K. E-mail: l.g.e.

smith@bath.ac.uk

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 06 March 2015

Revised 01 August 2016, Accepted 05 August 2016

Journal of Organizational Behavior, J. Organiz. Behav. 38, 487–511 (2017)

Published online 13 September 2016 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/job.2131

Research Article

Dorado (2010; p. 1420), institutional logics are ‘taken-for-granted social prescriptions that represent shared under-

standings of what constitutes legitimate goals and how they may be pursued (Scott, 1994)’. Thus, they can be un-

derstood as, ‘Broad belief systems that shape cognition and guide decision making in a field’(Battilana &

Dorado, 2010; p. 1420). In the current study, we demarcate two different kinds of institutional logics: descriptive

institutional logics and injunctive institutional logics. We propose that newcomers' beliefs about the institutional

logics that should operate at their new organization are the ‘injunctive logics’, and the reality of logics actually used

in practice within the organization are the ‘descriptive logics’(cf. Cialdini, Reno, & Kallgren, 1990; Smith, Thomas,

& McGarty, 2015). The concept of injunctive logics captures the fact that newcomers use a moral map, informed by

their past experiences and beliefs, to evaluate the procedures and practices of their new organization. Importantly,

injunctive and descriptive logics will have different origins, meanings, motivations and consequences (cf. Deutsch

& Gerard, 1955). We propose that discrepancies between injunctive and descriptive logics will affect how a

newcomer feels about the organization and their ability to act appropriately and competently within it.

Through assessing the impact of discrepant injunctive–descriptive institutional logics on individual socialization

processes, the current study addresses calls for more cross-level research that integrates concepts from institutiona l

theory with more micro-level concepts and processes (see, for example, Battilana & Dorado, 2010). This is impor-

tant because, ultimately, it is organizational actors (i.e., individual employees) who must enact and deal with insti-

tutional logics. As ‘taken-for-granted social prescriptions’, institutional logics are macro-level belief systems that

shape the cognition and decision making of individuals operating in a field. Thus, while the logics exist at the macro

level, they influence and are created and re-created at the individual level.

We examine how logics discrepancies impact on changes in identification and POT over time. Further, we inves-

tigate how, in turn, these changes in identification and POT impact on a key socialization outcome: the development

of newcomers' self-efficacy (SE). In this way, we use the institutional logics approach as a metatheory (Thornton &

Ocasio, 2008) to provide a framework for understanding where the development of identification and POT lie in re-

lation to newcomers' broader understanding of their professions and organizational field.

Institutional Logics and Socialization

Organizational socialization is the process by which newcomers acquire the attitudes, behaviours, knowledge, and

skills required to participate and function effectively as a member of the organization (Van Maanen & Schein,

1979). Part of effective organizational socialization is developing an understanding of how prevailing institutional

logics are enacted within the organization. This is necessary because institutional logics are the lenses through which

newcomers can understand and evaluate the legitimacy and meaning of organizational forms and managerial prac-

tices (Greenwood, Diaz, Li, & Lorente, 2010). Logics ‘pose the problems, provide the language for explaining and

understanding them, and determine their solutions’(Ford & Ford, 1994, p. 757).

In the current research, we examined institutional logics among newcomers in the healthcare sector. In this highly

bureaucratic sector, two broad sets of institutional logics exist—a professional clinical logic that serves to maximize

patient outcomes and care (Dunn & Jones, 2010) and a managerial logic that aims to increase efficiency and cost-

effectiveness (Kitchener, 2002; Reay & Hinings, 2005). Traditionally, the clinical logic has dominated healthcare

systems with its patient-centred philosophy prompting an ethical responsibility to ensure the best possible outcomes

for an individual patient. However, with the drive for increased efficiency and effectiveness in large healthcare sys-

tems, clinicians are increasingly required to create, manage and deliver more innovative and cost-effective forms of

integrated health services (Zismer, 2013). Integrated care aims to combine these logics to bring together ‘the orga-

nization and management of health services so that people get the care they need, when they need it, in ways that are

user-friendly, achieve the desired results and provide value for money’(WHO, 2008, p. 1). This integration of logics

can produce ‘hybrid organizational identities’(Battilana & Dorado, 2010) and turn hospitals into ‘integrated identity

organizations’(Jäger & Schröer, 2014, p. 1285), where both managerial and clinical logics affect organizational

488 L. G. E. SMITH ET AL.

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Organiz. Behav. 38, 487–511 (2017)

DOI: 10.1002/job