Abstract This chapter focuses on the critical juncture of new employee onboarding and socialization, emphasizing its implications for performance management (PM). It explores the transformation of newcomers from organizational outsiders to insiders, the excitement and stress associated with this transition, and the heightened anxiety around being welcomed and evaluated. The chapter discusses the roles newcomers assume—such as learners, contributors, and social actors—and the dynamics they encounter, including role ambiguity and social support. It highlights the influence of psychological constructs like self-efficacy, role clarity, social acceptance, and organizational fit on newcomers’ adjustment and job performance. The chapter also examines the PM system’s potential impact on newcomer adjustment and the importance of integrating onboarding and PM. It calls for future research to understand how newcomer socialization and PM processes influence each other and offers recommendations for practitioners and scholars.

The effective socialization of newcomers into organizations is critical for employee and organizational success. As such, ensuring successful onboarding has become even more pivotal for newcomer adjustment, performance, and retention. The literature has seen significant growth and incorporated new theoretical perspectives, such as resource-based approaches since the most recent comprehensive meta-analytic review of the literature. Therefore, we extended earlier reviews by presenting an updated model of the socialization process, reviewing the literature, and examining this updated model via meta-analysis. In all, we identified 256 studies that met our meta-analytic inclusion criteria, and 183 with sufficient k across construct categories were included in our meta-analysis. At the correlational level, we analyzed antecedents to proximal adjustment indicators and proximal adjustment to distal outcomes. We examined a potential moderator, whether the study took place in a horizontal-individualistic (HI) versus vertical-collectivistic (VC) culture. Last, we analyzed a path model to identify unique relationships between specific antecedents (age, full-time work experience, organizational tenure, proactive personality, information seeking, organizational tactics, insider mentoring/supporting), proximal adjustment indicators (social acceptance, role clarity, task mastery, perceived fit), and distal outcomes (job satisfaction, organizational commitment, turnover intentions, other-rated performance, and well-being). Our analyses uncover the role of proactive personality and proactive newcomer behaviors in newcomer adjustment and the importance of social acceptance for newcomers. They also identify perceptions of fit as an important but relatively under-examined adjustment indicator and newcomer well-being as an additional socialization outcome. We develop future directions for socialization theory and research methods.

Decades of studies spanning multiple disciplines have provided insight into the critical role of loneliness in work contexts. In spite of this extensive research, a comprehensive review of loneliness and work remains absent. To address this gap, we conducted a multidisciplinary review of relevant theory and research and identified 213 articles reporting on 233 empirical studies from management, organizational psychology, sociology, medicine, and other domains to uncover why people feel lonely, how different features of work can contribute to feelings of loneliness, and the implications of employee loneliness for organizational settings. This enabled a critical examination of the distinct conceptualizations and operationalizations of loneliness that have been advanced and the theories underpinning this scholarship. We developed a comprehensive conceptual model that integrates cognitive discrepancy theory, the affect theory of social exchange, and evolutionary theory. This model elucidates the core antecedents, mediators, outcomes, moderators, and interventions forming the nomological network of work related loneliness, including cross-level influences within teams and among leaders. Our review also identifies a number of promising areas for future inquiry to improve our understanding and measurement of loneliness, the process of experiencing and managing loneliness in the workplace, and potential interventions to reduce it. Finally, we provide tangible guidance for organizations and practitioners on how to address and mitigate employee loneliness. Ultimately, our review underscores the complex nature of loneliness and work and establishes a foundation for advancing both scholarly discourse and organizational practices in this critical domain.

In this study, we extend overqualification research by examining the indirect relationship between supervisor perceptions of employee overqualification and performance outcomes via task i-deals. We predict that employees are more likely to be granted task i-deals to the degree to which they are perceived as overqualified by their supervisors, which in turn indirectly and positively affects their task performance and citizenship behaviors. Further, we expect the relationship between supervisor-rated overqualification and task i-deals to be stronger when supervisor perceived peer overqualification and workgroup team orientation are lower. Analyses of multi-wave multi-source data from 682 employees nested in 115 workgroups in a consumer retail company in Iran provided support for our model. A second vignette-based experimental study of 183 participants offered additional support for the directionality of relations. Theoretical and practical implications and avenues for future research are discussed.

Individually negotiated customized work arrangements or idiosyncratic deals (i-deals) are an increasingly common practice in contemporary organizations. We propose that these deals are created and implemented in the social context of the workgroup and that one's position in the web of social relationships serves as a strategic advantage or barrier to accessing i-deals. Drawing on the social ledger model, we propose that being central in the trust network is positively associated with i-deals, whereas being central in the hindrance network is negatively associated with i-deals, with indirect effects on employee performance. Further, we predict that i-deals are affected more strongly by centrality in the hindrance network than by centrality in the trust network. Finally, we theorize that trust network density strengthens the negative relationship between hindrance network centrality and i-deals and that hindrance network density strengthens the positive relationship between trust network centrality and i-deals. Results of multilevel modeling and relative importance analyses in two field studies employing data from 305 employees and 57 supervisors in the United States and 502 employees and 101 supervisors in Iran provided support for our model. Implications and future directions for social network and i-deals research are discussed.

Organizational socialization and the practice of onboarding new hires are central human resources functions. However, traditional socialization theory and practice were built on assumptions that are increasingly misaligned with today's work context. We identified four current, emerging, and future work trends that characterize the evolving landscape surrounding organizational socialization: technological advancement, the expansion of remote work arrangements, rising societal loneliness and mental health challenges, and aging workforce demographics. Collectively, these trends have contributed to dramatic shifts in the context and performance of work, as well as the expectations that employees and organizations hold for one another. Accordingly, we argue that these shifts require a renewed examination of the organizational socialization process that reflects contemporary realities such as the move away from stable, physically co-located, psychologically anchored work toward boundaryless, tech-mediated, and transient work arrangements. Our review presents a future-forward look at organizational socialization through the lens of these societal and workplace shifts. We identify newcomer adaptability and connection as emergent critical factors for the future of onboarding. Through this lens, we offer practical implications for human resource practice and invite future research that advances our understanding of organizational socialization in today's context.

This study explored the motivational and affective implications of perceived underqualification, specifically examining how it leads to increased levels of envy and help-seeking behaviors. We predicted that envy and help seeking behaviors would in turn indirectly relate to interpersonal deviance and task performance. We further hypothesized that two psychological resources, hope and self-efficacy, would moderate the relationships between perceived underqualification, envy, and help seeking. We tested our model with a sample of 149 medical school students who were undergoing a clinical rotation as well as their rotation coordinators at a university hospital located in northwestern Turkey. Data collection spanned four waves, from the first day of their rotation to the end of that one-month rotation. Results supported positive indirect effects between perceived underqualification and task performance via help seeking, and between perceived underqualification and interpersonal deviance via envy. Further, hope moderated the relationship between perceived underqualification and task performance via help seeking, and self-efficacy moderated the relationship between perceived underqualification and envy.

Despite consistent findings that stressed employees benefit from social support, these employees do not always have access to such support. We propose and test a conceptual model suggesting employee work stress will negatively affect supervisory career and psychosocial mentoring support. Drawing from social exchange theory, we predict this will indirectly affect employee career success (lower career satisfaction and promotability ratings, fewer promotions), and that the relationship between employee work stress and lower supervisory mentoring support can be explained by lower levels of work engagement experienced by, and attributed to, stressed employees. We tested our model across three studies. In Study 1, we collected four waves of multisource field data (254 employees, 127 managers, and company records) at a large postal organization in the United Kingdom (UK). Employee work stress was negatively related to supervisor career and psychosocial mentoring support, and indirectly affected career satisfaction and manager promotability ratings of employees via supervisor career mentoring support. Cross-lagged panel analyses in a supplemental study additionally supported the proposed directionality of relationships. Study 2 included data across three waves from employees in Hong Kong (n = 137) and showed that employee work stress had indirect effects on supervisor career and psychosocial mentoring via lower employee engagement. In Study 3, using data from supervisors in the UK (n = 240) we showed that supervisor perceived employee stress had indirect effects on their provision of supervisor career and psychosocial mentoring support via lower perceived employee engagement.

PurposeTransformational leadership (TFL) has been suggested to create positive changes in employees with the goal of developing them into leaders. The authors integrate this well-established leadership style with recent research on idiosyncratic deals (i-deals). The authors suggest TFL as a predictor of task and development-based i-deals, and propose i-deals as a mediating mechanism linking TFL to employee outcomes (job satisfaction, job stress and manager-rated performance).Design/methodology/approachThe authors used a time-lagged research design, and collected four waves of data from 140 employees and 78 leaders.FindingsTFL was found to be an important predictor of i-deals. I-deals predicted job satisfaction and job stress; and it mediated the relationship between TFL and these two employee outcomes. Yet, i-deals were not associated with employee performance and did not mediate the relationship.Originality/valueFirst, it shows that transformational leaders who consider employees' unique skills and support their professional growth are more likely to grant personalized arrangements. Second, drawing from social exchange theory, it illustrates that i-deals may act as a linkage between TFL and employee outcomes. The paper bridges leadership and i-deals literature to identify key leverage points through which leaders can enhance employee satisfaction, well-being and performance.

During organizational entry, newcomers often draw upon internal resources like coworkers and supervisors to navigate their roles. Could external interactions with customers or patients hold the key to newcomer adjustment in certain job contexts? Our study, rooted in the conservation of resources theory, identifies a critical link between mistreatment from external parties and newcomer adjustment—a connection that is explained by rumination and work engagement. Through two studies involving new nurses in China (Study 1: four-wave cross-lagged panel design, N = 181; Study 2: four-wave time-lagged design, N = 198), we uncover that mistreatment from patients results in rumination among newcomers, leading to diminished task mastery and role clarity, as mediated by reduced work engagement. This ripple effect of external mistreatment persists even when accounting for internal mistreatment (abusive supervision and coworker incivility). Our results illustrate how negative interactions with external entities can hinder newcomer adjustment—a revelation with far-reaching implications for practitioners and future research. 1

In this study, we extend overqualification research to employees' social context of workgroup membership. Drawing upon social comparison theory and integrating with social exchange theory, we contend that employees' relative overqualification (ROQ, defined as individual overqualification relative to other group members' overqualification perceptions) is associated with their relative standing with their leader (measured as LMXSC, leader–member exchange social comparison), which in turn relates to employees' organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB). Furthermore, we assert that workgroup structural attributes and individual values (leader span of control and power distance orientation) influence the ROQ–LMXSC–OCB relationship. Multilevel modeling using data from 243 employees nested in 36 workgroups suggested patterns of moderated mediation where leader span of control and employee power distance orientation moderate the indirect link between ROQ and OCB through LMXSC. That is, the indirect relationship between ROQ and OCB is stronger in workgroups with a narrow leader span of control and for employees high in power distance orientation. Implications and directions for meso- and group-level research are discussed.

Integrating overqualification research with the social network perspective, we examine how social networks represent a mechanism linking relative overqualification and supervisors’ perceptions of employee organizational citizenship behaviors. Specifically, drawing upon social comparison and social exchange theories, we suggest that relative overqualification (ROQ) has implications for employees’ centrality in a friendship network and that friendship network centrality mediates the relationship between ROQ and supervisors’ perception of a focal employee’s organizational citizenship behaviors directed at coworkers (OCBI). Further, extending social comparison theory to the context of workgroup membership, we identify focal employees’ perception of workgroup team orientation as a moderator determining the strength of the indirect relationship between ROQ and OCBI via friendship network centrality. Multilevel modeling using multi-source time-lagged data from 182 employees and 33 supervisors working in restaurants in the Southwestern United States showed a negative relationship between ROQ and friendship network centrality with friendship network centrality mediating the relationship between ROQ and OCBI. Moreover, the results of path analysis indicated that the indirect relationship between ROQ and OCBI via friendship network centrality was stronger for employees who perceived low levels of team orientation. Implications and directions for perceived overqualification and social network research are discussed.

Drawing from Social Comparison Theory (Festinger, 1954), we predicted that perceived underqualification would have motivational and affective implications for employees, in the form of higher levels of envy and help seeking, to indirectly affect interpersonal deviance and job performance. Further, we hypothesized that a state of hope would serve as a moderator of the relations between perceived underqualification, envy, and help seeking. We tested our hypothesized model with a sample of 150 medical school students who were undergoing the start of a clinical rotation and their rotation coordinators at a university hospital located in northwestern Turkey. Data collection spanned 4 waves, from the first day to the end of the 1-month rotation. Results were supportive of positive indirect effects between perceived underqualification and job performance via help seeking, and between perceived underqualification and interpersonal deviance via envy. Further, the emotion of hope was a moderator of the perceived underqualification – help seeking relationship. Theoretical and practical implications derived from our findings are offered.