BU288 Lecture Notes - Lecture 20: Absenteeism, Free Trade, Psychological Contract
BU288 Lesson 20: Socialization, Culture, and Change
Socialization: Learning and Adjustment
-Socialization: Process by which people learn the norms and roles that are necessary to function
in a group of organization
-The way the organization helps you move from being an organizational outsider to an insider
-Goal of socialization is to help people fit in the organization
-Designed to make sure people understand what their roles are
Person-Job and Person-Organization Fit
-Person-Job Fit: Match between an employee’s knowledge, skills, and abilities and the
requirements of a job
• Match the employee’s abilities to job
-Person-Organization Fit: Match between an employee’s personal values and the values of an
organization
• Employees are picking organizations for whom they want to work
• Performance Model: Motivation is related to their fit
• Role perception
-New employees learn the organization’s culture and values
Important in terms of new employee adjustments (turnover, absenteeism)
Stages of Socialization
-All of the stages are targeted toward improving newcomer adjustment (minimizing stress, etc.)
1. Anticipatory Socialization
• Expectations can develop from previous education or training, stereotypes (evolved from
television shows, recruitment fairs, job fairs)
• Occurs before employees enter the organization
• Employees have expectation of what the organization will be like to work there
• Stereotypes and previous knowledge of job affects opinion about job
• People often go into organizations with beliefs/expectations that are not realization
• Socialization helps make sure that everyone is on the same page
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2. Encounter
• Meeting the members of the organization, early stages of being a part of the organization
(organization programs)
• Contact recruiters and interviewers
• Orientation Phase: E.g. O-week – moved students from being ‘outsiders’ to ‘insiders’
• Learning the norms, expectations, processes, experiences
• As you join the organization
• Cultures and norms become engrained
• Encountering phase can be short-lived
3. Role Management
• Aware of group and organization norms
• Leads to role modification as the culture and the norms become engrained
• Happens over extended period of time
Socialization Process
-Familiarize newcomers of job requirements, role in organization, how group processes work,
and different organizational processes
-As you move through the process, you meet more mentors (icebreakers, dons)
Methods of Socialization
-Organizations differ in terms of who does the socializing, how it is done, and how much is done
-Many organizations make use of the following methods of socialization
• Realistic job previews
• Employee orientation programs
• Socialization tactics
• Mentoring
Realistic Job Previews (RJPs)
-The provision of a balanced realistic picture of the positive and negative aspects of a job to job
applicants
• Designed to give a balanced approach and give people a basic understanding of the
positives and negatives so people can make an informed choice
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• Keep potential candidates’ expectations in check so they don’t go into the job with high
expectations and become disappointed once actually work there
-The provide ‘corrective action’ to expectations at the anticipatory stage of socialization
• Critical to be given before employees are in job b/c then it’s too late
• Designed to make people aware of all aspects of the job
-The realistic job preview process can be compared to the traditional preview process
• Traditional preview process deny employee’s right to know the truth about the job
-Designed to attract candidates
-Problem of attracting a big pool of good candidates: You might get someone who has the
highest qualifications but they might not be the best qualifications
• E.g. if someone is overqualified, they’re going to get bored and leave → turnover
-Are going to be more effective in cases where people don’t know much about what job entails
Theoretical Explanations of RJP Functioning
-Met Expectations: When people enter the job or organization, they usually have unrealistically
high expectations about the job, and it’s assumed that if the job doesn’t meet expectation, you’re
not going to be satisfied and you’re going to leave
• Initial expectations don’t have as much impact as the job itself
• Realistic job previews lower expectations to more realistic expectations, which increases
likelihood that you will be satisfied with the job, and less likely to turnover
-Air of Honesty:
• Gives you the positives and the negatives in making a decision
• If we make a decision where we don’t have all of the information, we don’t feel bad
about the decision because there was information that was held back from us (e.g.
choosing to turnover)
-Ability to Cope:
• Being given all the information about the decision enables us to cope better when the
decision happens
-Self-Selection:
• When people have full information, they are able to self-select out of jobs that they don’t
want/need
• If you give them a realistic picture, they can select whether or not the job is fit for them
Socialization Tactics
Institutionalized
Individualized
-Collective
• Everyone gets to socialize together in
new environment
• E.g. O-Week, first years interact
together
-Formal
• Newcomers are segregated from
existing members
• O-week was formal, first years were
separated from upper years
-Individual
• Everyone goes through new experience
on their own
-Informal
• No distinction between newcomers and
existing members
-Random
• Involves constantly changing
experiences along the route
-Variable
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Socialization: process by which people learn the norms and roles that are necessary to function in a group of organization. The way the organization helps you move from being an organizational outsider to an insider. Goal of socialization is to help people fit in the organization. Designed to make sure people understand what their roles are. Person-job fit: match between an employee"s knowledge, skills, and abilities and the requirements of a job: match the employee"s abilities to job. Person-organization fit: match between an employee"s personal values and the values of an organization: employees are picking organizations for whom they want to work, performance model: motivation is related to their fit, role perception. New employees learn the organization"s culture and values. Important in terms of new employee adjustments (turnover, absenteeism) Familiarize newcomers of job requirements, role in organization, how group processes work, and different organizational processes. As you move through the process, you meet more mentors (icebreakers, dons)
