Making the right friends: A social network perspective on newcomer socialization in teams

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.22020
• Author: Yiyuan Mai,Zhuxin Ye,Zhenyu Yuan,Ning Li,Jia (Joya) Yu
• Published date: 01 November 2020
• Date: 01 November 2020

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Making the right friends: A social network perspective on

newcomer socialization in teams

Zhenyu Yuan

1

| Ning Li

2

| Yiyuan Mai

3

| Zhuxin Ye

3

| Jia (Joya) Yu

4

1

Department of Managerial Studies, College of

Business Administration, University of Illinois

at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

2

Department of Management &

Entrepreneurship, Tippie College of Business,

University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa

3

Department of Innovation, Entrepreneurship

and Intellectual Property Rights, School of

Management, Huazhong University of Science

and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei Province,

China

4

Department of Management, College of

Business, University of Nebraska-Lincoln,

Lincoln, Nebraska

Correspondence

Zhuxin Ye, Department of Innovation,

Entrepreneurship and Intellectual Property

Rights, School of Management, Huazhong

University of Science and Technology, Luoyu

Road 1037, Wuhan, Hubei Province, China

430074.

Email: zoe_yezhuxin@hust.edu.cn

Funding information

National Natural Foundation of China,

Grant/Award Number: 71672064

Abstract

Despite the prevalence of work teams in organizations, how newcomers become

integrated into teams remains an understudied area. Drawing on research related to

indirect social resources, in this paper we employ a social network perspective to

examine how close teammates' friendship centrality can facilitate newcomers' adjust-

ment by fostering the newcomers' own social capital in teams and promoting their

subsequent task performance. Furthermore, our model incorporates institutionalized

socialization tactics and political skill as two contingencies that can further

strengthen the positive effects of indirect social resources on newcomers' adjust-

ment. In a time-lagged study using multiple sources of data, we found good support

for our hypotheses. Specifically, close teammates' friendship centrality was positively

related to newcomers' task performance through the mediating effect of newcomers'

own friendship centrality in teams. The two moderators further strengthened this

indirect effect. Overall, this study highlights the importance of “making the right fri-

ends”to facilitate newcomer adjustment into teams.

KEYWORDS

institutionalized socialization tactics, newcomer socialization, political skill, social

network, team

Newcomer socialization—the process through which newcomers

become assimilated to their new jobs—carries great importance in

organizations (Bauer, Bodner, Erdogan, Truxillo, & Tucker, 2007; Har-

ris, Li, Boswell, Zhang, & Xie, 2014). Scholars have conducted a large

volume of research in their quest to understand the various factors

that contribute to effective newcomer onboarding (Ashforth, Sluss, &

Harrison, 2007; Bauer et al., 2007; Bauer & Erdogan, 2014; Bauer,

Morrison, & Callister, 1998; Saks, Uggerslev, & Fassina, 2007). Despite

the progress that has been made in this area, the topic of newcomer

socialization in teams has received far less attention. This is problem-

atic, given that most contemporary organizations use teams to com-

plete a variety of work tasks (Mathieu, Maynard, Rapp, &

Gilson, 2008). As a result, many newcomers need to be successfully

assimilated into their teams as part of their onboarding process, as

“the proximal work group provides the immediate work and socio-

cultural environment within which the new recruit must learn to

accomplish job tasks and responsibilities”(Anderson &

Thomas, 1996, p. 423).

The handful of studies that have investigated this topic are lim-

ited to the effects of personal (i.e., general self-efficacy and experi-

ence; Beus, Jarrett, Taylor, & Wiese, 2014; Chen, 2005; Chen &

Klimoski, 2003) and team-related factors (team performance and team

expectations; Chen, 2005; Chen & Klimoski, 2003). However, how

newcomers become embedded into the within-team network remains

understudied. In this research, we take a network perspective and

posit that the social capital embedded in newcomers' social relations

with other team members can facilitate their adjustment to the new

environment (Adler & Kwon, 2002; Fang, Duffy, & Shaw, 2011;

Lin, 1999a).

As friendship ties are a pivotal conduit of resources for new-

comers (Morrison, 2002), we focus on this relational aspect of social

capital in the current study. Specifically, we aim to examine newcomer

DOI: 10.1002/hrm.22020

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