| Author: | Song, Zibin |
| Title: | The antecedents and consequences of socializees' adjustment during their organizational assimilation : an integrative study |
| Degree: | Ph.D. |
| Year: | 2010 |
| Subject: | Hong Kong Polytechnic University -- Dissertations Corporate culture |
| Department: | School of Hotel and Tourism Management |
| Pages: | xxiv, 318 p. : ill. ; 30 cm. |
| Language: | English |
| Abstract: | Organizational assimilation (OA) refers to the process by which socializees or employees become integrated into their employment organization following their organizational entry. Neglecting to assimilate socializees has substantial negative consequences, with socializees often poorly adjusting to their job, role, cultural, and/or psychosocial systems, in turn leading to lower overall job satisfaction (OJS), poor overall job performance (OJP), and higher turnover intentions (TI). Given its importance, OA phenomenon has attracted the attention of scholars who use multiple approaches to address it. The use of multiple approaches and the lack of consistency in conceptualizing and measuring OA adjustment have, however, hampered the development of OA research and practice. This study proposed and tested a new mediation model of OA that posits that socializees' success-related OA consequences (OJS, OJP, and TI) are functions of causal antecedents, including organizational socialization tactics (OST) and core self-evaluation (CSE), and mediators comprising task mastery, fitting in, standing out, role negotiation, and organizational identification. The study sought to explore and confirm the proposed OA adjustment dimensions from an integrative perspective, and to test the effects of the proposed antecedents on the consequences both directly and indirectly. A pilot study and a main study were conducted in which respondents filled out self-administered questionnaires. Eight star-rated, moderately priced, and luxury hotels participated in the pilot study, yielding 481 usable questionnaire copies, and 19 star-rated luxury hotels participated in the main study, yielding 704 usable copies. Organizational tenures in the main study were between 1 month and 2 years. Bootstrap SEM (structural equation modeling) was employed across both samples to develop both measurement and structural models. Direct and indirect hypotheses among the latent proposed constructs were tested based on the overall structural model of the main study. The study's first contribution is the development of a new measurement model of OA adjustment dimensions from an integrative perspective, which contributes new (fitting in and standing out) and partly new (role negotiation) dimensions, while using some traditional dimensions (task mastery and organizational identification), thereby adding value to the literature, particularly since OA research has been hampered by the unsatisfactory psychometric properties of existing OA adjustment measures and by the contamination of study findings using these problematic measures. The study's second contribution involves the individual and competing influences of OA antecedents on their respective adjustment dimensions and consequences. OST and CSE, when controlled by the other, predicted all five proposed mediators. The five adjustment dimensions in turn predicted (either significantly or not) their respective OA consequences depending on the given paths. Specifically, OJS was predicted by organizational identification but not the other four adjustment dimensions; OJP was predicted by all adjustment dimensions except role negotiation; and TI was predicted by task mastery, fitting in, and organizational identification, but not by role negotiation or standing out. The study's third contribution lies in identifying the five mediating mechanisms of the adjustment dimensions. The six antecedent-consequence paths were OST-OJS, OST-OJP, OST-TI, CSE-OJS, CSE-OJP, and CSE-TI. Specifically, task mastery and fitting in mediated all paths except OST-OJS and CSE-OJS; standing out mediated OST-OJP and CSE-OJP; and organizational identification mediated all six paths. All mediators except role negotiation significantly mediated between two and six specific paths. Thus, the findings regarding the overall mediation model and the identified specific direct and indirect causal paths contribute substantially to OA theory and practice, thereby adding value, particularly considering the relative lack of theory in the OA domain and the fact that a "mediation model will likely pave the way to more holistic and inclusive models" of OA (Ashforth et al., 2007, p. 21). The study's fourth contribution is that the new OA adjustment measure and other validated measures could serve as diagnostic tools of socializee adjustment. Finally, this study's limitations and directions for future studies are also discussed. |
| Rights: | All rights reserved |
| Access: | open access |
Files in This Item:
| File | Description | Size | Format | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| b23930068.pdf | For All Users | 3.31 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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