A new look at the psychological contract during organizational socialization: The role of newcomers' obligations at entry

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2078
• Date: 01 August 2016
• Published date: 01 August 2016

A new look at the psychological contract during

organizational socialization: The role of

newcomers’obligations at entry

NATHALIE DELOBBE

1

*, HELENA D. COOPER-THOMAS

2

AND ROXANE DE HOE

3

1

Louvain School of Management, Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

2

School of Psychology, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

3

Louvain School of Management, Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

Summary Previous studies have demonstrated that the psychological contract is largely shaped during socializa-

tion. This study adopts a complementary perspective and analyzes how the psychological contract at

the start of employment shapes the subsequent socialization process. Drawing upon social exchange

theory, we propose that newcomers with a higher sense of their personal obligations at entry will

perceive orientation training as more useful and develop better relationships with their supervisors

and peers, which in turn will facilitate their work adjustment. Results of a longitudinal survey on a

sample of 144 recruits from a European Army show that newcomers with a higher initial sense of

their employee obligations toward their employer report higher perceived training utility, higher

leader–member exchange (LMX) with their instructors, and higher team–member exchange (TMX)

with their platoon peers. Moreover, perceived training utility and LMX predict the fulfillment of

employers’obligations; and training utility predicts the level of newcomers’employee obligations.

Finally, training utility, LMX, and TMX predict some of three indicators of newcomers’adjustment,

namely, role clarity (training utility and LMX), group integration (TMX), and organizational values

understanding (training utility). These results highlight how newcomers’obligations at the start

of employment contribute to the social exchange dynamic underlying organizational socialization.

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Keywords: organizational socialization; psychological contract; leader–member exchange; team–member

exchange; training

The first few months in a new organizational environment constitutes a critical period both for the employer

and for the newcomer (De Vos & Freese, 2011; Thomas & Anderson, 1998). Through socialization processes,

the newcomer learns the ropes of his or her new role and becomes an effective member of the organization. In

particular, this period is considered to be crucial in shaping and stabilizing the psychological contract, defined

as the individual’s perception of the reciprocal obligations which underlie the exchange relationship between

the employee and the employer (Rousseau, 1990). To date, research on the psychological contract during

the socialization process has mainly documented the newcomer’s unfavorable reactions to the employer’s

failure to fulfill perceived obligations (Dulac, Coyle-Shapiro, Henderson, & Wayne, 2008; Lapointe,

Vandenberghe, & Boudrias, 2013; Robinson, Kraatz, & Rousseau, 1994; Tekleab, Orvis, & Taylor, 2013).

Researchers have also analyzed how psychological contracts develop during socialization either as a result

of active information-seeking behaviors and knowledge acquisition by the newcomer or in response to

perceived employer inducements and employee contributions (De Vos, Buyens, & Schalk, 2003; De Vos &

Freese, 2011; Thomas & Anderson, 1998).

*Correspondence to: Nathalie Delobbe, Louvain School of Management, Université catholique de Louvain, 1, place des Doyens, 1348 Louvain-

la-Neuve, Belgium. E-mail: nathalie.delobbe@uclouvain.be

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 06 December 2013

Revised 12 November 2015, Accepted 23 November 2015

Journal of Organizational Behavior, J. Organiz. Behav. 37, 845–867 (2016)

Published online 27 December 2015 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/job.2078

Research Article

Instead of considering the psychological contract as a result of the socialization process, Payne, Culbertson,

Boswell, and Barger (2008) suggested that the employee’s anticipatory psychological contract, which is formed

before entry and includes their own and the employer’s obligations, might act as an antecedent of the new-

comer’s involvement in socialization activities. We examine this proposition, specifically how newcomers’

perceptions of their own obligations when entering the employment relationship affect their engagement in

orientation training and in social relationships with supervisors and peers, and how these factors facilitate

in turn their work adjustment. Our study complements previous research by considering that the psycholog-

ical contract shapes the subsequent socialization process as well as the reverse, and that the newcomers’

view of their own obligations matters more than their perception of employer obligations in shaping the psy-

chological contract.

More specifically, this study extends our understanding of the active role of newcomers in the socialization

process in three ways. First, drawing upon social exchange theory (Blau, 1964; Coyle-Shapiro & Conway, 2004;

Sluss & Thompson, 2012), we suggest that newcomers’perceived obligations when entering the organization influ-

ence their subsequent appraisal of three well-known socialization facilitators, namely, training, and quality of the

relationship with the supervisor (leader–member exchange (LMX)) and with peers (team–member exchange

(TMX)). Second, we suggest that newcomers interpret training utility and high-quality LMX as evidence that their

employer is fulfilling its obligations, which has the effect of heightening further the level of newcomers’obligations

as employees and of reducing the level of employer’s obligations. Third, we investigate how newcomers’percep-

tions of their own obligations at entry indirectly explain socialization outcomes, namely role clarity, group integra-

tion, and organizational values understanding, via their effect on perceived training utility and on the quality of

LMX and TMX.

Our research was conducted in the context of an intensive military training program where highly institutionalized

socialization tactics prevail. Hence, our results contribute also to understanding how micro-variations within a

strongly socializing situation affect newcomers’work adjustment. Overall, we build an integrated framework that

places newcomers’pre-entry employee obligations in a central antecedent role. Depicted in Figure 1, our hypothetical

framework represents a first empirical effort to investigate the role of newcomers’obligations developed pre-entry in

the reciprocation dynamic which underlies the evolution of the psychological contract during organizational

socialization.

Figure 1. A model of the evolution of the psychological contract during organizational socialization

846 N. DELOBBE ET AL.

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Organiz. Behav. 37, 845–867 (2016)

DOI: 10.1002/job