Synergy or substitution? The interactive effects of insiders' fairness and support and organizational socialization tactics on newcomer role clarity and social integration

• Date: 01 July 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2369
• Published date: 01 July 2019

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Synergy or substitution? The interactive effects of insiders'

fairness and support and organizational socialization tactics

on newcomer role clarity and social integration

Mohamed Ikram Nasr

1

|Assâad El Akremi

2

|Jacqueline A.‐M. Coyle‐Shapiro

3,4

1

Department of Organizational Behavior and

Leadership, EM Lyon Business School, Écully,

France

2

TSM Research (UMR CNRS 5303), University

of Toulouse Capitole, Toulouse, France

3

Department of Management, London School

of Economics and Political Science, London,

UK

4

College of Business and Public

Administration, California State University, San

Bernardino

Correspondence

Assâad El Akremi, TSM Research (UMR CNRS

5303), University of Toulouse Capitole, 2 rue

du Doyen Gabriel Marty, 31042 Toulouse,

France.

Email: assaad.el‐akremi@ut‐capitole.fr

Summary

Drawing on fairness heuristics theory (Lind, 2001) and cue consistency theory

(Maheswaran & Chaiken, 1991; Slovic, 1966), we test a moderated mediation model

that examines whether the institutionalization of organizational socialization tactics

enhances or constrains the beneficial effects of supervisory and coworker‐

referenced justice and support on newcomer role clarity and social integration. The

findings of a three‐wave study of 219 French newcomers show that although institu-

tionalized tactics strengthen the positive indirect effects of supervisory interpersonal

and informational justice on role clarity, via perceived supervisor support, it also acts

as a substitute that weakens the positive indirect effect of coworker‐referenced

interpersonal justice on social integration, via perceived coworker support. Implica-

tions of the findings for socialization research and practice are discussed.

KEYWORDS

organizational justice, organizational socialization tactics, perceived social support, role clarity,

social integration

1|INTRODUCTION

How newcomers transition from outsiders to adjusted insiders is

receiving increasing attention because of its lasting effects on perfor-

mance (Bauer, Bodner, Erdogan, Truxillo, & Tucker, 2007; Ellis,

Nifadkar, Bauer, & Erdogan, 2017). Organizational socialization, defined

as the process by which individuals “learn the ropes”and acquire the

attitudes, behaviors, and knowledge needed to participate as an orga-

nizational member (Allen, Eby, Chao, & Bauer, 2017), can be a key

source of competitive advantage. Indeed, growing evidence suggests

that effective socialization has important mutual benefits for both

organizations and newcomers. For organizations, it helps them retain

new hires and reap the benefits of adjustment (Allen & Shanock,

2013; Snell, 2006), and it helps newcomers manage the uncertainties

of the onboarding process (Fang, Duffy, & Shaw, 2011).

The socialization literature highlights the role of learning and

assimilation as the two main processes leading to effective socializa-

tion (Korte, 2010; Ostroff & Kozlowski, 1992). Newcomers are

required to succeed across multiple domains, including learning new

tasks and roles, integrating within the workgroup, internalizing the

organization's goals and values, and familiarizing themselves with its

language and political and cultural characteristics (Chao, O'Leary‐

Kelly, Wolf, Klein, & Gardner, 1994). Achieving success in each of

these domains requires the combined contributions of different

socializing forces: (a) the organization, via its formal onboarding pol-

icies—these “organizational socialization tactics”characterize the

structural side of socialization and can vary in terms of their level

of institutionalization, such that greater institutionalization reflects a

more systematic set of practices (Jones, 1986; Van Maanen &

Schein, 1979); (b) individual insiders, including supervisors,

coworkers, mentors, and other experienced employees, who provide

informational and psychological support to newcomers (Korte, 2010;

Reichers, 1987); and (c) newcomers themselves, who actively seek

information and feedback, build relationships, frame situations posi-

tively, and negotiate their job's duties (Ashford & Black, 1996;

Gruman, Saks, & Zweig, 2006).

Received: 25 December 2017 Revised: 5 April 2019 Accepted: 9 April 2019

DOI: 10.1002/job.2369

758 © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J Organ Behav. 2019;40:758–778.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/job

A fine‐tuned understanding of the processes leading to successful

socialization requires the disentanglement of the direct effects of

these antecedents, as well as an examination of the interdependencies

and interactions between them (Kammeyer‐Mueller & Wanberg,

2003). In particular, although socialization research has traditionally

considered insiders as merely an extension of the organization's social-

ization program, recent studies suggest that they can operate indepen-

dently through relational mechanisms and exert unique effects on

newcomer adjustment (Ellis et al., 2017; Montani, Maoret, & Dufour,

2019). What is less clear, though, is how the use of formal socialization

tactics affects the ability of supervisors and coworkers to help new-

comers' adjustment. This is important because the informal interac-

tions between newcomers and insiders are embedded in the broader

organizational context, which is in part shaped by the organization's

socialization practices (Miller & Jablin, 1991).

The few empirical studies investigating the interactions between

the relational and structural antecedents of socialization have yielded

mixed findings. On the one hand, support has been found for a syner-

getic pattern whereby organizations' formal initiatives, such as institu-

tionalized tactics, and relational antecedents reinforce and/or

complement each other's effects (e.g., Kondakci & Haser, 2012; Lee,

Veasna, & Wu, 2013; Montani et al., 2019; Simosi, 2010). On the

other, researchers have observed a substitutive pattern whereby insti-

tutionalized tactics reduce the socializing effects of relational factors

by providing newcomers with alternative sources of information and

self‐validation (e.g., Dulac & Coyle‐Shapiro, 2006; Kim, Cable, & Kim,

2005; Liden, Bauer, & Erdogan, 2004). For instance, Lee et al. (2013)

found that institutionalized tactics strengthen the effects of social

support on expatriates' adjustment and performance, whereas theo-

retical argumentation presented by Liden et al. (2004) and empirical

findings of Dulac and Coyle‐Shapiro (2006) suggest that institutional-

ized tactics weaken the effects of leader–member exchange on new-

comer attitudes and behaviors. In a similar vein, Kim et al. (2005)

conducted a study of 279 newcomer–supervisor pairs from seven

organizations in South Korea in which they predicted that newcomers'

relationship building would act as a substitute to negate the effects of

socialization tactics on adjustment. Although their results were in line

with their expectations regarding the moderating effect of the

newcomer–supervisor relationship, they also found that, contrary to

their predictions, newcomers' general socializing with insiders

interacted in the opposing (positive) direction with institutionalized

tactics (i.e., the effect of formal socialization on person–organization

fit was stronger for newcomers who interacted more frequently with

different members of the organization). This latter finding suggests

that institutionalized tactics and newcomer–insiders relationships

interact following a synergistic pattern. Kim et al. (2005) speculated

that this unexpected result might be explained by the collectivist cul-

ture of South Korea and suggested future research examines how

the nature of the social ties that newcomers build affect the relation-

ships among socialization tactics, proactivity, and adjustment.

These mixed findings are problematic because they hinder

scholars' and practitioners' ability to predict when structural and rela-

tional drivers of socialization are jointly needed. Resolving this

inconsistency would help organizations design more efficient

onboarding programs by identifying the socialization domains for

which the combined investment of the organization, via its formal

practices, and the insiders, via their informal efforts, produces syner-

gistic effects and thus provides the greatest benefit to newcomers.

This paper aims to contribute to this effort by examining how organi-

zational and relational factors interact to determine newcomer success

in two critical socialization domains: (a) learning and (b) assimilation.

We argue that the processes leading to newcomer learning and assim-

ilation are determined by different cognitive and psychological mech-

anisms and thus are best explained by different theoretical rationales.

In particular, learning is shaped by the extent to which newcomers

make sense of their new environment and integrate pieces of informa-

tion from different sources (Brehmer, 1972; Ostroff & Kozlowski,

1992), whereas assimilation is driven by how they interpret the social

context, their access to social capital and identification with their

workgroup (Blau, 1960; Fang et al., 2011). Consequently, we draw

on cue consistency theory (Maheswaran & Chaiken, 1991; Slovic,

1966) to argue that the indirect positive effects of relational fairness

—through perceived supervisor support (hereafter, “PSS”) and per-

ceived coworker support (“PCS”)—on newcomer role clarity (a learning

outcome) are strengthened by institutionalized socialization tactics.

Conversely, we predict that these interactions will be antagonistic in

the case of social integration (an assimilation outcome) using social

information processing theory (Salancik & Pfeffer, 1978).

Our model, depicted in Figure 1, contributes to the socialization lit-

erature in two ways. First, drawing on fairness heuristic theory (Lind,

2001), we introduce perceptions of justice as a means by which new-

comers cope with entry uncertainty, infer perceptions of social support,

and, consequently, enhance their learning and assimilation. Examining

the effects of insiders' fairness on newcomer adjustment contributes

to the emerging strand of research in the role of social context during

socialization (e.g., Kammeyer‐Mueller, Wanberg, Rubenstein, & Song,

2013; Korte, 2010; Morrison, 2002)—an area in need of further explo-

ration, according to Batističand Kaše's (2015) bibliometric review. Sec-

ond, we offer a nuanced understanding of when the beneficial effects

of these relational factors are limited or strengthened by organizational

socialization tactics. More precisely, we provide differentiated ratio-

nales to predict when these interactions will be synergistic as in the

case of role clarity and when they are substitutive as in the case of

social integration. Our nuanced approach helps reconcile previous con-

tradictory findings (e.g., Dulac & Coyle‐Shapiro, 2006; Kim et al., 2005;

Lee et al., 2013), by highlighting a dual opposing effect of institutional-

ized socialization tactics on newcomers' ability to adjust in different

socialization domains (learning vs. assimilation).

2|THE INTERPLAY OF RELATIONAL AND

STRUCTURAL ANTECEDENTS OF

SOCIALIZATION

Interactions with insiders are the primary route through which new-

comers establish situational identities and make sense of

NASR ET AL.759