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The purpose of this study was to create and validate a measure of organizational assimilation index. Organizational assimilation describes the interactive mutual acceptance of newcomers into organizational settings. Members from the advertising, banking, hospitality, university, nonprofit, and publishing industries participated in two phases of research. In the first phase, 13 interviewees suggested six dimensions of organizational assimilation: familiarity with others, organizational acculturation, recognition, involvement, job competency, and adaptation/role negotiation. The second phase involved analysis of a survey of 342 participants that appeared to validate the six dimensions. The OAI's construct validity was tested and supported through the use of three other scales. Job satisfaction and organizational identification related positively to assimilation, while propensity to leave related negatively.
KEY CONCEPTS organizational assimilation, organizational assimilation index, organizational socialization, newcomer integration
Fisher (1986) highlighted about the lack of research devoted to the processes involved in organizational entry. In recent years, however, our understanding of the processes related to organization entry has benefited from several lines of research, including processes organizations use to orient and mold recruits into productive organizational members (Chao, O'Leary-Kelly, Wolf, Klein, & Gardener, 1994; Schein, 1968; Van Maanen & Schein, 1979), socialization turning points (Bullis & Bach, 1989), methods of organizational orientation and training (Holton, 1996; Jones, 1986), efforts exerted by newcomers themselves through adaptation (Ashford & Taylor, 1990), behavior self-management (Saks & Ashforth, 1996), coping strategies (Teboul, 1997; Waung, 1995), early involvement (Bauer & Green, 1994), information seeking (Miller & Jablin, 1991; Morrison, 1993; Ostroff & Kozlowski, 1992), and role negotiation (Kramer & Miller, 1999; Miller, Jablin, Casey, Lamphear-Van Horn, & Ethington, 1996).
Organizational assimilation refers to "the processes by which individuals become integrated into the culture of an organization" (Jablin, 2001, p. 755). Although some scholars note that "assimilation" emphasizes individuals' giving up their individualities to fit in with their new collectives (see Bullis, 1999; Clair, 1999; Turner, 1999), we feel it is a useful aspect of newcomer entry because becoming an effective member of an organization involves not just organizational efforts to socialize new members nor, in turn, efforts of recruits to become accepted by organizational incumbents. Successful assimilation involves both organizations and newcomers.
Despite the prevalence of research on these processes, there is no measure of organizational assimilation. The stage...