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Organizational socialization is a critical human resource (HR) function that has implications for individuals, groups, and organizations. It is the primary means through which individuals become adjusted and assimilated into organizations, and it also has implications for the career success of individuals and the effectiveness of organizations (Ashforth, Sluss, and Harrison, 2007; Saks and Gruman, 2014).
Although a great deal has been learned about the effects of socialization practices on socialization outcomes, most research has been based on uncertainty reduction theory and very little is known about the effects of socialization on newcomers’ work engagement. In this paper, we argue that organizational socialization has the potential to have a positive effect on newcomers’ work engagement and suggest that work engagement provides an alternative pathway to newcomer socialization. However, relatively little attention has been given to how socialization can lead to the development and maintenance of newcomers’ work engagement. Furthermore, the primary approaches to organizational socialization revolve around reducing uncertainty and are not likely to be as effective for developing newcomers’ work engagement. Therefore, the main objective of this paper is to explain how socialization can be an effective means for developing and maintaining newcomers’ work engagement and to develop a new pathway to newcomer socialization through work engagement.
This paper is organized in six sections. First, we introduce newcomer work engagement maintenance curves to better understand how newcomers’ work engagement can fluctuate during the first year of organizational entry and during the socialization process. Second, we provide a brief review of socialization research and note how most research has been based on uncertainty reduction theory as the primary pathway to newcomer socialization which is most evident in research on socialization tactics, newcomer information-seeking, and socialization content and learning. Third, we discuss the limitations of the uncertainty reduction pathway and current approaches to organizational socialization for facilitating newcomers’ work engagement. Fourth, we discuss resource theories and introduce a new pathway to newcomer socialization through work engagement. Fifth, we discuss how socialization resources theory (SRT) can be used for the development and maintenance of newcomers’ work engagement by providing newcomers with various resources at different times throughout the socialization process. In the sixth and final section of the paper, we provide some suggestions for future research and...