Socialization is the cornerstone of employee integration and adaptation to a new job, allowing new employees to learn and internalize critical components of their organization's structure, role requirements, and social dynamics. This study aimed to improve our understanding of the process through which new employees (N = 932; Mage = 40.11; 58.5% female) are socialized within a new job by identifying profiles, or pathways, characterized by both global and domain-specific task, workgroup, and organizational socialization experiences. More precisely, this study longitudinally monitors the stability of the nature of, and membership into, these profiles over an 18-month period, and their associations with theoretically and practically relevant predictors and outcomes. Five stable profiles were identified: Well-Adapted Social & Task-Driven, Ill-Adapted Task-Driven, Moderately Adapted, Well-Adapted Organizationally Driven and Perfectly Adapted. Generally, newcomers prioritizing more than one socialization domain displayed better global socialization experiences, although a profile driven by organizational socialization was as beneficial in the short term as one driven by workgroup and task socialization. The worst profile was driven solely by task socialization. Newcomers' workplace affective commitment, specifically organization, task, supervisor and coworker commitments, were positively associated with membership into more desirable socialization profiles, albeit distinctively. Profile membership was associated with different patterns of adaptation in terms of work-related outcomes (i.e., performance, turnover intentions, job engagement, emotional exhaustion) and transitions to different socialization pathways. Research and practical implications of the identified socialization pathways are discussed.
Drawing on attribution theory, this study explores how employees explain organizational decisions concerning pay rises and promotions, conceptualizing these attributional processes as an interpretive layer that precedes fairness evaluations, and how distinct configurations of causal explanations are associated with work-related attitudes. The research was conducted in an Italian bank, leveraging on a two-wave design and a two-study structure. The full sample (N = 3193) was randomly split into two equivalent subsamples. Study 1 (n = 1540) used latent profile analysis to identify three attribution profiles: meritocratic attributors profile, the institutional attributors profile, and the relational-structural attributors profile. Study 2 (n = 1599) replicated the profile structure, assessed their longitudinal stability and tested associations with demographic and work-related predictors as well as key work outcomes. Study 2 shows that the meritocratic attributors profile and the relational-structural attributors profile are both stable over time, while the institutional attributors profile is more fluid. Demographic and work-related factors were associated with profile membership. Older employees and those in higher positions were more likely to belong to profiles emphasizing competence-based or institutionalized explanations, whereas younger employees and women were more often associated with profiles emphasizing relational and structural explanations, such as networks and gender dynamics. Our findings also reveal that attribution profiles are associated with different attitudes toward work. Employees in the meritocratic attributors profile reported the highest levels of work engagement, affective organizational commitment, distributive justice, and trust in management. These levels were lowest among employees in the relational-structural attributors profile, consistent with the idea that explanations centered on relational dynamics and structural constraints are associated with less favourable evaluations of organizational decisions.
PWT proposes that structural barriers such as economic constraints and marginalization shape young people's opportunities to access decent work. In line with PWT, the persistent youth unemployment crisis in Nigeria raises important questions about how emerging adults envision their prospects for obtaining decent work. Thus, this study explored how Nigerian college students conceptualize decent work, perceive barriers to securing it, and understand their future work expectations in relation to academic engagement and wellbeing. We used emergent qualitative document analysis (QDA) to examine open-ended responses from 443 college students through open and axial coding, identifying themes reflecting the cultural, structural, and individual dynamics surrounding future work access. Results showed that participants' conceptualizations of decent work largely overlapped with current PWT conceptualizations while also extending them in several ways, including greater attention to workplace dignity, legal recognition, social contribution, meaningful engagement, location, and social protection. Participants understood barriers to future decent work at multiple levels, including individual factors, structural constraints, and broader economic conditions. Their accounts also reflected varied relationships between future work expectations and academic engagement and wellbeing, including increased academic effort, discouragement and disengagement, and neutral or ambivalent responses. These findings extend PWT by revealing culturally salient meanings of decent work and suggest that cultural and economic contexts may shape how its constructs are experienced and understood.
