Nowadays many organizations make an aggressive and proactive newcomer as their desirable corporate image of qualified employee, and they also concentrate on plans to give help for the success of the organizations by emphasizing the importance of the i...
Nowadays many organizations make an aggressive and proactive newcomer as their desirable corporate image of qualified employee, and they also concentrate on plans to give help for the success of the organizations by emphasizing the importance of the impression management to build confident image with customers who are closely related to the profit of the company. Many organizations require competent people that properly deal with promptly changing circumstance and use flexibly effective tactics to satisfy with customers. Actually, newcomers' aggressive and proactive tactics make good effects to the success of the organizations but also positive effects to their adaptation in organizations(Saks & Ashforth, 1997). Therefore many organizations make efforts to employ these newcomers to implant responsible image to customers.
Like this, newcomers use effective socialization tactics in the process of adaptation of organization. In accordance with this, when examining the trends of the organizational socialization research, before and behind 1990, one of the most noticeable changes is that newcomers are regarded from as passive to proactive being(Morrison, 1993). This change of the perspective for newcomers implies many important points in the organizational socialization research. That is, previous research of the organizational socialization regarded newcomers as acceptable beings regarding various education and training provided by organization. However since 1990, many research regarding organizational socialization has said that newcomers not depend only on the help of organizations but try to make efforts to adapt organizations rapidly and effectively(Miller & Jablin, 1991; Ostroff & Kozlowski, 1992; Morrison, 1993; Saks & Ashforth, 1996; Ashford & Black, 1996; Chan & Schmitt, 2000; Wanberg & Kammeyer- Mueller, 2000; Kim et al., 2005).
Recently, individual's goal orientation has an effect on the adaptive and maladaptive behavior in various circumstances(Dweck, 1986), and turned out to be the important concept to understand the process of the effective adaptation in organizations(Elliot & Harackiwicz, 1996). Therefore this study verifies the relationship between newcomer's goal orientation and socialization tactics in the process of organizational socialization. Specially, I verify that whether socialization tactics mediate the relationship between newcomer's goal orientation and organizational socialization or not.
Therefore in this study, I consider the concept and importance of organizational socialization, and examine the concept and importance of proactive behavior and impression management as socialization tactics. Next, I examine the relationship between goal orientation and socialization tactics through theoretical research and previous study of goal orientation. Based on previous studies, I set the research model and research hypotheses. To verify these hypotheses, survey delivered 375 newcomers of total 11 organizations. 209 members in the target samples returned questionnaires among which 184 have been used for analysis. To test these hypotheses, Structural Equation Modeling(SEM) and Sobel test are performed. That is, to find whether research model is fully mediating model or partially mediating model, I performed structure equation modeling, and to find out whether there is mediating effect or not, I performed Sobel Test.
The results are summarized as follows.
First, newcomer's socialization tactics turned out to be have an effect on organizational socialization. Specifically, newcomer's proactive behavior is positively related to organizational socialization, and newcomer's assertive impression management is positively related to organizational socialization. However, in the case of the defensive impression management, it is negatively related to organizational socialization but, it is not statistically significantly related to organizational socialization, so it is rejected.
Secondly, newcomer's goal orientation has an effect on socialization tactics. Specifically, newcomer's mastery goal orientation is positively related to proactive behavior, and newcomer's performance- approach goal orientation is positively related to assertive impression management, and newcomer's performance - avoidance goal orientation is positively related to defensive impression management.
Thirdly, to find out whether there is the mediating effect or not, I performed Sobel Test. As a result, proactive behavior turned out to mediate the relationship between mastery goal orientation and organizational socialization, and assertive impression management turned out to mediate the relationship between performance- approach goal orientation and organizational socialization. However, defensive impression management turned out not to mediate the relationship between performance- avoidance goal orientation and organizational socialization.
Finally, in this study, organizational socialization related to proactive behavior and assertive impression management as socialization tactics, and socialization tactics related to sub- factors of goal orientation.
In summary, newcomer's mastery goal orientation is related to proactive behavior to a method to acquire continually new skills and knowledge, and newcomer's performance- approach goal orientation is related to assertive impression management, and newcomer's performance- avoidance approach goal orientation is related to defensive impression management. Next, newcomer's proactive behavior and assertive impression management is positively related to organizational socialization, and newcomer's proactive behavior and assertive impression management are mediating the relationship respectively between newcomer's mastery goal orientation, performance- approach goal orientation and organizational socialization. The results have several theoretical and practical implication.
First, This research verifies the relationship with sub-factors of goal orientation and socialization tactics together, and this study shows that the sub-factors of the goal orientation influence socialization tactic through each differential process.
Second, this survey is expected that it provides us with a suggestion which enables us to understand the establishing process of various forms of socialization tactics to be used in order to promote newcomer's organizational socialization.
Third, this study suggests that we should regard individual's goal orientation as one of main managing factors when organizations hire organizational members in organizations.
Limitations of this study and suggestions for future studies are as follows.
First, because organizational socialization and socialization tactics can be changed by time, we can give more accurate information about socialization process through the longitudinal research about how organizational socialization and socialization tactics change by time.
Second, research data was done by response method through questionnaires, and in this process, this survey may have the possibility of common method bias.
Third, this study only focused proactive behaviors and impression management as socialization tactic, but in the future study, I suggest that it needs to design a model which covers various variables of individual's socialization tactic.