When in Rome, Feel as the Romans Feel: An Emotional Model of Organizational Socialization

Abstract

Organizational socialization literature has long emphasized learning organizational culture upon entry. However, most previous socialization studies have largely focused on learning job skills, such as role clarity and task mastery. Focusing on emotional culture, the author provides a review about the roles of emotions in an organizational socialization context. Further, drawing upon the organizational socialization and emotion literature, the author builds a theoretical model, an emotional model of organizational socialization highlighting how newcomers adjust to the emotional culture within an organization, which ultimately leads to successful organizational socialization. This article provides new conceptual insights into the roles of newcomers’ adjustment to an emotional culture in a socialization context, providing fruitful ways for future empirical testing.

1. Introduction

Organizational socialization, “the process by which newcomers make the transition from being organizational outsiders to being insiders” (Bauer et al. 2007, p. 707), is critical for workplace sustainability because organizations must hire new employees on a continuous basis for workplace sustainability (Price 2009). Organizational socialization processes help newcomers internalize the values, norms, and cultures of the organization (Haski-Leventhal and Bargal 2008) and even reshape the organization’s character (Birnholtz et al. 2007), which plays an important role in developing sustainable competitive advantages (Ross Wooldridge and Minsky 2002). Although organizational socialization involves newcomers’ cognitive processes during entry, such as ‘learning the ropes’, they also experience affective events putting them into situations where they must emotionally interact with other organizational members. Thus, this study seeks to review the roles of newcomers’ emotions and emotional management in organizational socialization and further suggests fruitful ways to advance the field.

Emotional management and expressions are pivotal in social relationships because they affect others’ emotional or behavioral reactions by triggering inferential processes (Parkinson et al. 2005; Reis and Collins 2004; Van Kleef 2009). Managing and expressing one’s emotions is an integral part of organizational lives (Ashkanasy et al. 2017) because “a key component of work performed by many workers has been the presentation of emotions that are specified and desired by their organizations” (Morris and Feldman 1996, p. 987). Others’ inferences and reactions (i.e., whether the target’s emotional presentations are perceived as appropriate) are determined by the nature of cultural norms (Grandey et al. 2005a; Härtel 2008; Härtel et al. 2008; Hochschild 1979; Ravid et al. 2010; Van Kleef 2009). Accordingly, during organizational entry, newcomers need to understand the emotional culture of an organization, and the “dominant values, beliefs, assumptions, and norms of the organization or a given subunit regarding affective issues, together with the symbolic vehicles for conveying these attributes, such as vocabulary and metaphors” (Ashforth and Saks 2002, p. 353) representing the emotional ambience in organizations, which influences how affective events are interpreted and reacted to by organizational members (for more reviews, see Härtel 2008). Thus, although teams within the same organization may have a different emotional climate requiring and/or affected by different ways of managing one’s emotions (Berman Brown and Brooks 2002; Härtel et al. 2008), an emotional culture emphasizes the general social context in organizations. Ashforth and Saks (2002, p. 353) coined this phenomenon as the socialization of emotion, which refers to “how newcomers are socialized to understand the emotional culture and to regulate the experience and expression of their own and others’ emotions” (p. 353).

Successful adjustment to the emotional culture in new organizations is critical for newcomers for the following reasons. First, except for occupations in which appropriate emotional expressions are clearly defined are a core job requirement, such as service or healthcare industry jobs (Rafaeli and Sutton 1987; Sutton 1991), emotional culture is often implicit in organizations (Ravid et al. 2010; Diefendorff et al. 2006; Kramer and Hess 2002; Tschan et al. 2005). Thus, learning the emotional culture can be challenging for newcomers, especially in their early organizational lives, because, similar to tacit knowledge, such implicit norms are rarely communicated through formal newcomer onboarding or training programs. Second, despite the challenges, organizational insiders constantly appraise newcomers’ behaviors (e.g., whether newcomers behave in an appropriate and acceptable manner in the organization), and these appraisals made in the early period of newcomers’ organizational lives are likely to influence if they are socially accepted by insiders, and, ultimately, if they become successful insiders (Moreland and Levine 2002). Hence, adjustment to the emotional culture in new organizations is often indicative of successful socialization, as it represents whether newcomers are following communication norms and rituals in organizations (Kramer 2010).

The organizational socialization literature has demonstrated several ways in which newcomers socialize into their new work environments. Notably, two meta-analyses (Bauer et al. 2007; Saks et al. 2007) identified how organizations (e.g., organizational-level socialization tactics) and newcomers (e.g., personality or individual-level socialization tactics) can both facilitate socialization processes. Specifically, both organizational and newcomers’ efforts have positive effects on proximal and distal socialization outcomes. However, these frequently studied proximal and distal outcomes in the socialization literature do not fully capture how newcomers cope with their emotions during organizational entry (Ashford and Nurmohamed 2012). For example, studies have mainly focused on newcomers’ affective experiences, such as job satisfaction or affective commitment, as socialization outcomes (Morrison 2002) or as a means of explaining the socialization process by looking at newcomers’ hedonic tones (Kammeyer-Mueller et al. 2013; Nifadkar et al. 2012). As a result, although we know how newcomers emotionally react to work events in general, our understanding of how newcomers adjust to the emotional culture (i.e., learning how to manage their inner and outer emotions congruent with the emotional culture in their new organizations) and its influences on the socialization processes is still in a nascent state.

Emotion researchers examined how employees adjust to the emotional norms by focusing on emotional display rules, meaning “the appropriate expression of emotions on the job” (Diefendorff and Richard 2003, p. 284). Emotional display rules are not entirely separate from the emotional culture because they are “culturally learned conventions about what is (and is not) appropriate to express in any given situation” (Parkinson et al. 2005, p. 17). However, most previous studies on emotional display rules have focused on jobs explicitly requiring high levels of customer interactions (Allen et al. 2010; Christoforou and Ashforth 2015; Miner et al. 2005; Rafaeli 1989; Sutton 1991) despite the fact that those rules, as implicit norms, also exist in many other types of work units or organizations (Diefendorff et al. 2006; Kramer, 2010; Kramer and Hess 2002; Ravid et al. 2010; Tschan et al. 2005). For instance, the sources of emotional reactions at work for employees in both service and nonservice professions are usually the repeated interactions with other organizational members, such as coworkers, which are inevitable, in that they are necessary for completing one’s tasks (Riforgiate and Komarova 2017). Thus, while interacting with coworkers, managing one’s emotions by conforming to such norms in the organizations is an integral part of organizational lives. It is worth noting that I do not argue that such norms are more important while interacting with coworkers than customers. Studies have shown that, compared to interactions with coworkers, interactions with customers are more strongly related to emotional work (Grandey et al. 2002; Totterdell and Holman, 2003). However, not all employees interact with customers. In addition, even employees in service professions interact with coworkers as well as customers. My intention here is to argue that we need to extend the concept of emotion work to the interactions with other organizational members as well as customers. This article aims to provide a review about the roles of emotions in organizational socialization as well as unify and advance the socialization literature by building on the emotional model of organizational socialization. To do this, first, I briefly review the roles of emotions and emotional culture in the organizational socialization context. I then build an emotional model of organizational socialization drawing from the socialization and emotion literature. Specifically, following the two main topics in the organizational socialization literature (Allen et al. 2017; Bauer et al. 2007), the model emphasizes the roles of two socialization agents, newcomers (newcomer proactivity) and organizations (institutionalized socialization tactics, task interdependence, and physical proximity), which can help newcomers acquire emotional culture-relevant information within their new organizations, which increases new employees’ perceived person–organization (P–O) fit and organizational identification.

The following boundary conditions apply to the current study. First, the theoretical model developed in this study focuses on newcomers’ emotional socialization within their organizations, not on their particular jobs. Thus, separating from most emotional labor studies focusing on specific jobs, this study focuses on emotional cultures that all employees, including newcomers, are expected to follow when interacting with other employees within the organization. Second, implicit in the model is that learning the emotional culture would lead to better adjustment to it (i.e., manage and display one’s emotions following the emotional culture) and ultimately lead to better socialization outcomes. The model focuses on how to facilitate newcomers’ learning of emotional culture because, although newcomers may experience discrepancies between their own ways of managing and expressing emotions in their new organizations, upon understanding the emotional culture, they are more likely to accept and follow these norms by changing their personal values (Van Maanen and Schein 1979; Van Vianen and Pater 2012). Third, the model applies to newcomers in nonleadership positions, such as entry-level positions. New leaders who may serve as a changing agent can intentionally behave against existing norms in the organization (Bass and Avolio 1993). Thus, it is also likely that leaders may intentionally violate the emotional culture of the organization. Lastly, the model focuses on how newcomers (i.e., those who have already accepted the position) acquire emotional culture-relevant information during their organizational entry. In other words, although it is feasible that newcomers’ pre-entry experiences take part in facilitating or deterring their socialization process (Kammeyer-Mueller and Wanberg 2003), main attention is directed toward how newcomers, as formal new employees, adjust to the emotional culture within their new organization. In the following sections, I provide the theoretical foundation for developing a new socialization framework. Further, based on the theoretical foundation, I develop an emotional model of organizational socialization with propositions.

2. Theoretical Foundation

2.1. Emotions in Organizational Socialization

Organizational socialization is a critical stage for newly hired employees, at which time they obtain an accurate sense of what is expected of them. The majority of the socialization literature has emphasized learning, such as role clarity and task mastery, as well as the social aspects, such as social integration, of socialization processes. Indeed, empirical studies support the positive associations between learning and social assimilation of socialization and newcomers’ job satisfaction, as well as job performance (Ashforth et al. 2007; Bauer et al. 2007; Kammeyer-Mueller and Wanberg 2003; Klein et al. 2006; Maier and Brunstein 2001; Morrison 2002; Wanberg and Kammeyer-Mueller 2000).

The socialization literature directed its attention to newcomers’ emotions, mainly to affective outcomes, such as newcomers’ job satisfaction (Adkins 1995; Nelson and Quick 1991; Wesson and Gogus 2005), organizational commitment (Klein et al. 2006; Morrison 2002; Wang et al. 2011; Wesson and Gogus 2005), and hedonic tones (Kammeyer-Mueller et al. 2013; Nifadkar et al. 2012). However, beyond the affective outcomes of socialization, as suggested by Van Maanen (1978), the socialization process involves how newcomers learn the appropriate manner of emotionally coping with their new situations. As a result, although how newcomers emotionally react to work events is relatively well established, our understanding of how new employees learn the appropriate and accepted way of managing and expressing their emotions and how organizations can facilitate the very learning processes during organizational entry are still relatively lacking (Ashforth and Saks 2002; Wanberg and Choi 2012). Notably, Ashforth and Saks (2002) proposed the framework of emotion socialization with a focus on social identities and identification. The framework especially emphasizes the importance of emotional culture, which serves as guidance for newcomers to decide how to manage and appropriately express their emotions in their organizations. Emotional culture is reviewed in greater detail in the next sections.

2.2. Emotional Expressions in Organizations

How employees should manage their emotions at work has been studied largely in two domains—emotional labor and emotional culture. The literature on emotional labor, which refers to “the act of displaying appropriate emotion (i.e., conforming with a display rule)” (Ashforth and Humphrey 1993, p. 90), focuses on the organizational norms for how employees should manage their emotions in the workplace (i.e., emotional display rules) in certain jobs, such as convenience-store clerks (Rafaeli 1989) and bill collectors (Sutton 1991), which are emotionally highly demanding. Such emotional display rules represent organizational expectations for employees’ emotions to be either expressed or suppressed as part of the work roles (Diefendorff and Greguras 2009), and employees use surface- or deep-level acting to better perform their jobs (Grandey 2003; Grandey et al. 2005b). However, emotional display rules and employees’ acting strategies in the emotional labor literature are part of employees’ jobs, not a part of their socialization. That is, employees can understand emotional display rules in service interactions, but that does not necessarily mean that they understand such norms among coworkers. Although a large body of emotional labor studies focused on emotionally demanding jobs, it is also very likely that different emotional display rules exist in many other jobs and organizations (Kramer 2010; Kramer and Hess 2002; Ravid et al. 2010; Tschan et al. 2005). Indeed, emotional labor can exist virtually in any job, with or without service interactions, because every single event related to work, coworkers, and supervisors in organizations can stimulate employees’ affective reactions (Miner et al. 2005).

Accordingly, the literature on emotional culture takes a broader perspective, in that such norms for emotional management and expressions are represented as an organizational character, rather than being job-specific, because “emotions are created or constructed as part of a common sensemaking process in social structures” (Callahan and McCollum 2002, p. 14). In other words, the emotional labor literature emphasizes emotional display rules as formal expectations for employees, whereas the emotional culture literature views it more as conventions and implicit norms influencing how affective events at work should be interpreted and how individuals should then emotionally respond to it (Härtel 2008). Indeed, organizations can have a different emotional culture of how to express and deal with emotions within them (Fineman 1993; Gordon 1990). For example, although it is not formally required and mentioned, the display of emotions is discouraged among organizational members in a “macho culture” organization (Plas and Hoover-Dempsey 1988).

2.3. Emotional Culture for Newcomers

The literature on organizational socialization has emphasized how important it is for newcomers to learn their organizational culture (Chao et al. 1994; Fisher 1986; Katz 1985; Louis 1990; Reichers 1987; Van Maanen and Schein 1979), “the shared meanings and manifestations of organizational behaviors” (Kopelman et al. 1990, p. 284) reflecting organizational members’ common beliefs, values, and assumptions. For example, Van Maanen and Schein (1979) argued that socialization involves learning the culture of the organization. Accordingly, Louis (1990) defined newcomer socialization as the process of acculturation of new organizational members. While proposing the six socialization domains (i.e., history, language, politics, people, organizational goals and values, and performance proficiency), Chao et al. (1994) also stressed the importance of the knowledge of the social climate and culture transmission in the socialization process. However, despite the importance of learning the organizational culture during entry, researchers have paid relatively less direct attention to the matter.

It is noteworthy that, similar to organizational socialization studies, the literature on organizational culture to date has also exclusively been from a cognitive perspective missing an emotional content (Barsade and Gibson 2007; Barsade and O’Neill 2014; O’Neill and Rothbard, 2017). For example, the seminal work by O’Reilly et al. (1991) outlined seven essences of organizational culture consisting of innovation and risk-taking, outcome orientation, attention to detail, team orientation, people orientation, stability, and aggressiveness. Emotional culture, as a subset of organizational culture, is distinctive from the above seven aspects of organizational culture in that attention is more explicitly directed toward the emotional ambience in an organization (Härtel 2008) and is “enacted and transmitted mainly through nonverbal and physiological channels (italics added)” (Barsade and O’Neill 2014, p. 583). Thus, in the socialization context, it is possible that newcomers successfully adjust to other aspects of the organizational culture but not the emotional organization culture. For example, a new employee, upon new-employee orientation, knows who to go to when they have questions and are familiar with not only the job itself but also the type of compensation and benefits they will receive as part of their job. However, the same newcomer may struggle to connect with their coworkers in the hallway, during watercooler chats, or lunches, resulting in being viewed as awkward by their coworkers (i.e., demonstrating low adjustment to the emotional organizational culture).

Newcomers go through an emotional learning cycle during the socialization period (Härtel 2008). When experiencing affective events at work, newcomers learn how they should interpret events and decide how to manage and express their emotions in different situations. That is, newcomers constantly gauge and learn the emotional culture. Understanding the emotional culture and behaving aligned with it can be particularly important for newcomers since it could represent whether they follow the implicit norms within an organization. In addition, insiders regard expressing appropriate emotions aligned with such emotional culture as in-role requirements (Diefendorff et al. 2006), meaning that newcomers’ behaviors that are in conflict with the emotional culture can be indicative of being a poor fit to the organization.

Fortunately, a few studies (Ashforth and Saks 2002; Scott and Myers 2005) have explored how to help newcomers learn the emotional culture of an organization. For example, Scott and Myers (2005), using qualitative study methods, demonstrated how newly hired firefighters socialize to manage their emotional displays in fire stations. The main means new firefighters used to grasp the emotional culture were observations of other organizational members. In addition, exposure to emotionally demanding stimuli on a continuous basis habituated and diminished firefighters’ emotional reactions over time. Accordingly, we can infer that newcomers learn the emotional culture via processes of proactively seeking relevant information from insiders or observing others.

3. Emotional Model of Organizational Socialization

In this section, I first briefly review how newcomers acquire socialization information in general. Following that, I propose a model that describes the newcomer emotional socialization process. Specifically, the model focuses on how to facilitate newcomers’ learning of the emotional culture in organizations that ultimately helps them perceive a greater P–O fit and organizational identification. Figure 1 depicts the proposed emotional model of organizational socialization.

3.1. Newcomers’ Information Acquisition

During organizational entry, because they do not have enough information for their successful adjustment, newcomers seek out information to narrow information discrepancy (Miller and Jablin 1991). The socialization literature acknowledged that newcomers utilize insiders as important information sources for this purpose. Indeed, empirical studies support the assumption that peers not only provide social support (Allen et al. 1999; Nelson and Quick 1991) but also act as important sources of normative and social information. For example, in mentor–protégé relationships, Chao (2007) argued that mentors not only provide valuable organizational information to newcomers but also serve as role models to newcomers. Supporting this, compared to those without mentors, newcomers with mentors are able to learn more about organizational issues during the early socialization period (Ostroff and Kozlowski 1992). However, newcomers solicit specific types of information from different sources. Morrison (1993b) showed that, although newcomers seek technical or role-demands information from their supervisors, when it comes to normative and social information, they are more likely to gather relevant information from their peers. Accordingly, we can infer that interacting with insiders and having opportunities to observe how experienced insiders manage and express their emotions are the keys for newcomers to better understand the emotional culture in new organizations. In the following sections, the roles of two important socialization agents, newcomers (newcomer proactivity) and organizations (institutionalized socialization tactics, task interdependence, and physical proximity), in facilitating newcomers’ emotional socialization processes are discussed.

3.2. Newcomer Proactivity

Newcomers engaging in proactive socialization tactics can minimize the uncertainties they experience during organizational entry (Ashford and Black 1996). That is, they take such initiatives to change the status quo (Crant 2000) to help their adjustment to their new organizations. Indeed, empirical studies on proactive socialization tactics support the positive effects of newcomers’ proactivity during their socialization period (Major and Kozlowski 1997; Miller and Jablin 1991; Ostroff and Kozlowski 1992; Wanberg and Kammeyer-Mueller 2000).

Undoubtedly, not all socialization information, including social and normative information, can be provided by organizations (Wanberg and Kammeyer-Mueller 2000). Since emotional culture exists as a form of implicit information embedded within an organization, emotional culture-relevant information is also less likely to be communicated through formal channels within an organization. Newcomer proactivity can help in the acquisition of such informal information because it enables them to have access to informal information sources, including experienced insiders. When employees do not have access to necessary information through formal channels, they can rely on informal information sources (Loury 2006). The use of an informal information source can be very important in the socialization process because it expedites issue recognition to much earlier than the information provided through formal communication channels (Aguilar 1967; Mintzberg 1975). Supporting that, Seibert et al. (2001) found that proactive employees possess a higher level of political knowledge, which involves informal structural information of the organization since they are more active in gathering such informal information. In the socialization context as well, Kammeyer-Mueller and Wanberg (2003) showed that proactive newcomers are more knowledgeable about the political structure in their new organizations. In other words, proactive newcomers have better access to implicit information, such as the emotional culture, in their organizations.

Following Ashford and Black’s (1996) dimensions of proactive socialization tactics, I propose that relationship building and positive framing could help newcomers acquire emotional culture-relevant information. First, relationship building, which describes general socializing, networking, and building relationships with bosses, can help newcomers develop their workplace network with experienced insiders within and even outside of their department. These social interaction behaviors not only help newcomers avoid loneliness (Nelson and Quick 1991) and be socially included (Wanberg and Kammeyer-Mueller 2000), but also provide important information sources of what to do and how to do it in organizations. Fang et al. (2011) also suggested that newcomers engaging in relationship building could facilitate newcomers’ learning and social assimilation through better access to social capital, including a stronger network structure and resources. That is, information that flows through a newcomer’s social network can help them better learn about their organization and tasks. In support of Fang et al. (2011), Korte (2009) showed that, rather than relying on their knowledge and past experiences, newly hired engineers use coworkers and supervisors as primary sources of learning social norms. Therefore, because emotional culture-relevant information is generally implicit in organizations, proactive newcomers in relationship building better understand the emotional culture, which, in turn, facilitates their adjustment to it.

Second, newcomers can use positive framing, which refers to a cognitive self-management mechanism that newcomers use to positively interpret their new situations and alter their emotional experiences in organizations to keep themselves from being caught up with negative experiences in organizations (Ashford and Black 1996; Ashford and Nurmohamed 2012). Affective events at work can trigger newcomers’ positive or negative emotions and have them emotionally interact with other insiders by managing and expressing their emotions. As the social information model (Van Kleef 2009) suggests, observers (i.e., insiders) use a target’s (i.e., newcomer’s) emotional expressions as social information that consequently affects their inferences and affective reactions. Through emotional interactions, newcomers are expected to learn the appropriate way of managing and expressing their emotions by interpreting the insiders’ affective reactions to their emotional expressions. However, when experiencing negative reactions from insiders (i.e., when their emotional expressions are not deemed appropriate), newcomers, who are afraid of social rejection, may get ‘cold feet’ when interacting with them later on. Positive framing helps newcomers build their confidence in responding to insiders’ information (Fang et al. 2011). That is, even though they may experience negative affective reactions from insiders, newcomers exhibiting positive framing will see challenges as opportunities to learn the emotional culture. It is also likely that newcomers may experience dissonance between their own approach to managing and expressing emotions and emotional culture. Newcomers who use positive framing can be more amenable, rather than cynical, to organizational norms by helping them interpret organizational norms in a way to help their adjustment (Kim et al. 2005). Hence, newcomers’ positive framing facilitates their adjustment to the emotional culture.

Proposition 1.

Newcomers’ proactivity (relationship building and positive framing) during entry helps them better adjust to the emotional culture.

3.3. Organizational Socialization Tactics

Organizational socialization tactics are “the ways in which the experiences of individuals in transition from one role to another are structured for them by others in the organization” (Van Maanen and Schein, 1979, p. 230), as a means to facilitate newcomer socialization. Most previous studies focusing on socialization tactics at the organizational level adopted the conceptualization by Van Maanen and Schein (1979): (1) collective vs. individual; (2) formal vs. informal; (3) sequential vs. random; (4) fixed vs. variable; (5) serial vs. disjunctive; and (6) investiture vs. divestiture. However, Jones (1986) recategorized Van Maanen and Schein’s (1979) six dimensions into three: context (collective vs. individual, formal vs. informal), content (sequential vs. random, fixed vs. variable), and social tactics (serial vs. disjunctive, investiture vs. divestiture). He further suggested that that each end of the six continua produces dissimilar role orientations. At one end (i.e., collective, formal, sequential, fixed, serial, and investiture), which is labeled as institutionalized socialization tactics, are orchestrated and planned events by organizations. The opposite end (i.e., individualized socialization tactics) represents spontaneous and unplanned events by organizations (Ashforth and Saks 2002). Therefore, institutionalized tactics are formal and structured organizational practices (Wang et al. 2015) providing more structured socialization experiences with newcomers, which is important for uncertainty reduction (Lapointe et al., 2014). Although each conceptualization of organizational socialization tactics may capture different types of efforts by organizations, results from a meta-analysis demonstrated that they are very likely to be highly intercorrelated (Bauer et al. 2007). Thus, most recent studies operationalized organizational socialization tactics as institutionalized vs. individualized (Ashforth et al. 2007; Benzinger 2016; Fang et al. 2011; Gruman et al. 2006; Kim et al. 2005; Lapointe et al. 2014; Perrot et al. 2014). Following those studies, the single continuum of organizational socialization tactics was adopted to further elaborate the emotional model of organizational socialization.

Institutionalized socialization tactics by organizations help newcomers reduce uncertainty by providing socialization information that guides their behaviors in a structured way (Fang et al. 2011; Gruman et al. 2006; Kim et al. 2005; Lapointe et al. 2014). For example, organizations using institutionalized socialization tactics provide newcomers with training experiences that give knowledge of job-relevant skills with the active involvement of experienced insiders in the socialization processes, either in training or advising newcomers (Jones, 1986). Supporting this, Mignerey et al. (1995) showed that newcomers experiencing institutionalized socialization seek socialization information and feedback from other insiders, which reduce uncertainty during organizational entry. More importantly, institutionalized socialization tactics can also help newcomers access informal information, such as emotional culture-relevant information, since they provide newcomers with opportunities to be connected with experienced insiders (Fang et al. 2011; Kim et al. 2005). Supporting that, an empirical study found that institutionalized socialization tactics help newcomers acquire socialization knowledge, including not only role- and interpersonal-resource domains, but also social- and organization-domain knowledge (Cooper-Thomas and Anderson 2002). In addition, institutionalized socialization tactics facilitate newcomers’ acceptance of preset organizational norms by reducing ambiguities and maintaining the status quo by providing a structured socialization program (Ashforth and Saks 1996; Jones 1986). Therefore, newcomers who experience institutionalized socialization tactics better understand the emotional culture. Low institutionalized socialization tactics, however, put newcomers in uncertainty and even encourage them to challenge the status quo by creating their own approaches in emotion-laden situations at work. Thus, they are more likely to misinterpret the emotional culture.

Proposition 2.

Newcomers who experience high institutionalized socialization tactics during entry better adjust to the emotional culture.

3.4. Task Interdependence

Job characteristics can facilitate the organizational socialization process. The socialization literature provides empirical support for how job characteristics can facilitate newcomer socialization process. For example, Ashforth et al. (1998) showed that, because job characteristics increase employees’ motivation at work in general, newcomers reporting high motivating potential scores show higher job satisfaction and organization identification, and lower turnover intentions. However, despite the potential importance of job characteristics, their roles in the organizational socialization context remain underexplored (Batistič, 2018; Saks and Gruman 2012). Moreover, previous empirical studies examining the roles of job characteristics in the socialization context (Ashforth et al. 1998; Colarelli et al. 1987; Feldman and Weitz 1990) are somewhat limited in that they have merely explored the roles of the five job characteristics suggested by Hackman and Oldham (1975).

To elaborate on the emotional model of organizational socialization, I suggest that task interdependence, as a core job characteristic, can help newcomers’ adjustment to the emotional culture by helping them be better connected with experienced insiders. Kiggundu (1981) suggested that task interdependence, which implies one’s requirements to interact with others, is one of the key job characteristics missing in Hackman and Oldham (1975). Since task interdependence reflects the interpersonal and social aspect of work (Morgeson and Humphrey, 2006), it can be especially important in learning the emotional culture. That is, since employees acquire tacit knowledge through interactions with others (Nonaka, 1994), task interdependence can facilitate newcomers’ learning of the emotional culture by helping them become embedded in the much broader social environment. The emotional labor literature also shows that interdependence can shape newcomers’ emotional-display-rule perceptions (Diefendorff and Greguras 2009), because the extent to which they interact with organizational members affects the accuracy and amount of social information in the workplace.

Task interdependence not only requires newcomers to interact with experienced insiders, but also provides them with opportunities to observe insiders’ emotional expressive behaviors. Although the socialization literature emphasizes newcomer proactivity, such as information-seeking behaviors, in the socialization processes, this often comes with social costs (Miller and Jablin, 1991; Morrison 1993a; Sias and Wyers 2001). For example, when newcomers repeatedly ask questions to experienced insiders, they may feel afraid of appearing incompetent in new organizations. When newcomer information seeking comes with such social costs, it is likely that newcomers rely on covert information-seeking tactics (e.g., observing others) than overt tactics (e.g., directly asking questions to insiders) during organizational entry (Jablin 2001; Miller 1996; Tidwell and Sias 2005).

Social-learning theory (Bandura 1977) provides a framework of how vicarious learning (i.e., observing experienced insiders’ emotional expressions) can facilitate emotional socialization. That is, according to the theory, newcomers can learn the appropriate way of managing and expressing their emotions by observing insiders’ emotional expressions in emotion-laden situations at work. The developmental psychology literature also supports this argument by showing that, for instance, children develop a sense of appropriate ways of expressing emotions by observing their parents’ emotional expressive behaviors (Denham et al. 2010). In the socialization context as well, newcomers mimic and learn the experienced organizational members’ behaviors through vicarious learning (Manz and Sims 1981; Weiss 1977). Hence, task interdependence can facilitate the newcomers’ learning of emotional culture by providing them with opportunities to observe insiders’ behaviors. In sum, when newcomers and insiders are highly interdependent, it is likely that newcomers better understand and adjust to the emotional culture.

Proposition 3.

Newcomers who perceive high task interdependence during entry better adjust to the emotional culture.

3.5. Physical Proximity

In addition to job characteristics, I propose that the design of the organizational space can facilitate the emotional socialization process. Regarding the extent to which newcomers acquire social information, such as emotional culture-relevant information, the physical proximity between newcomers and other organizational members can play an important role. Physical proximity allows frequent interactions between subjects, resulting in more exchange of social information (Rice and Aydin, 1991; Thompson and Nadler 2002). Studies on social networks also support that physical proximity between actors facilitates communication between the two (Allen 1997; Krackhardt 1994) making it much easier to seek information from other actors (Borgatti and Cross 2003). In addition, physical proximity is one of the main factors in selecting information sources (Pinelli 1991). That is, employees are more likely to seek information from those who are located in physical proximity, such as peers and coworkers (Pinelli 1991). Since peers and coworkers are important sources for social information (Morrison 1993b), newcomers who work in physical proximity with other organizational members better understand and adjust to the emotional culture.

Proposition 4.

Newcomers who work in physical proximity with other organizational members during entry better adjust to the emotional culture.

3.6. P–O Fit

P–O fit, the compatibility between employees and their organizations (Bowen et al. 1991; Kristof 1996; Schneider 1987), captures newcomers’ fit with the organizational culture (Van Vianen and Pater 2012). Newcomers who understand and successfully adjust to the emotional culture share common emotional norms with other organizational members. Although newcomers may experience a mismatch between the emotional culture of their organizations and their own beliefs of how to manage and express emotions at work, upon understanding the emotional culture, they are more likely to resolve this dissonance by attempting to accept and follow the emotional culture (Van Maanen and Schein 1979) because it is much easier for newcomers to change their personal values than to change their work environment (Van Vianen and Pater 2012). The emotional mimicry literature also suggests that, when individuals have affiliative intent they are more likely to display their emotions congruent with emotional display rules (Hess and Fischer 2014). During entry, newcomers have a strong intention to become successful organizational insiders by positively affiliating with insiders and their organization. Indeed, empirical studies support that, over time, newcomers’ P–O fit perceptions change in a direction that coincides with organizational values (Cable and Parsons 2001; Cooper-Thomas et al. 2004; De Cooman et al. 2009; O’Reilly et al. 1991). Thus, upon understanding the emotional culture, newcomers are more likely to reduce dissonance by internalizing the organization’s values (Cable and Parsons 2001), which, in turn, increases perception of P–O fit.

Proposition 5.

Emotional cultural adjustment increases newcomers’ perceived P–O fit.

3.7. Organizational Identification

Organizational identification is the degree to which an “organizational member has linked his or her organizational membership to his or her self-concept, either cognitively (e.g., feeling a part of the organization; internalizing organizational values), emotionally (pride in membership), or both” (Riketta 2005, p. 361). While the organization itself is not a humanlike entity, actions by organizational agents can be indicative of the organization’s intent, not solely attributed to agents’ personal motives (Levinson 1965). This personification of the organization allows employees to build unique employee–organization relationships (Rhoades and Eisenberger 2002). Being an essential part of not only people in the organization but also the organization itself is another integral aspect of organizational socialization.

Emotional socialization is likely to foster organizational identification. The concept of organizational identification includes affective-motivational terms. For instance, some scholars view organizational identification based on attraction and as an individual’s desire to maintain their emotionally satisfying relationships with their own identification objects (Kelman 1961; O’Reilly and Chatman 1986). Social-identity theory also acknowledges the affective component of organizational identification and considers social identity as a “part of an individual’s self-concept, which derives from his knowledge of his membership of a social group (or groups) together with the value and emotional significance attached to that membership” (Tajfel 1978, p. 63). Hence, if newcomers lack accuracy in their perceptions of the emotional culture, they are less likely to be satisfied with their emotional experiences in the workplace and may seek other places to attach emotionally, which detracts their identification with the organization. On the other hand, if newcomers understand the emotional culture in their organization, they are satisfied with their membership in the workplace and perceive themselves as an important part of the organization.

Proposition 6.

Emotional cultural adjustment increases newcomers’ organizational identification.

4. Discussion

4.1. Theoretical Contribution

This study extends our current knowledge on organizational socialization by providing promising future-study avenues. First, this study sheds lights on the importance of adjustment to organizational culture, especially emotional culture, during organizational entry. Despite the fact that many scholars suggested that newcomers’ learning of organizational culture is critical in the socialization process (Chao et al. 1994; Fisher 1986; Katz 1985; Louis 1990; Reichers 1987; Van Maanen and Schein 1979), it has been often overlooked or mentioned only implicitly in the literature. Bauer et al. (1998, p. 162) also pointed out that “it is surprising that only a few studies have focused on how newcomers learn about and internalize cultural norms and values, particularly since socialization has been conceptualized as one of the primary ways in which organizational culture is transmitted and maintained”. Even after two decades, our understanding of how newcomers adjust to the organizational culture is still in a nascent state. Focusing on the emotional culture, the theoretical model presented in this study provides a more systematic and comprehensive view on how newcomers adjust to the organizational culture, which leads to successful socialization. Future research will benefit from empirically testing the presented model and even expanding the ideas of the model to different subsets of organizational culture.

Second, answering the calls for new emotion research in organizational socialization (Ashford and Nurmohamed 2012; Ashforth and Saks 2002), this study suggests a new way of incorporating emotions into the organizational socialization research by arguing that how newcomers manage and display their emotions following the emotional culture is important in successful socialization. This is important since most previous socialization studies on emotions directed their attention to affective outcomes or hedonic tones during organizational entry, and relatively less attention has been paid to how newcomers should manage and express their emotions in an appropriate way. Extending Ashforth and Saks (2002), which focuses on organizational interventions (e.g., off-site and on-site training) in emotional socialization, I propose how three socialization factors, newcomers’ proactivity, organizational-level socialization tactics, and job characteristics, can help newcomers better adjust to the emotional culture. Future research can empirically test the propositions and also endeavor to explore other means that facilitate the process. The model also provides fruitful research avenues for emotional-labor studies that have mainly focused on specific occupations requiring high levels of customer interactions (Allen et al. 1999; Christoforou and Ashforth 2015; Rafaeli, 1989; Sutton 1991). That is, the new model in this article expands its boundaries by providing new ideas of how employees, especially newcomers, with or without service interactions, learn the appropriate way of managing and displaying their emotions in their organizations.

Third, this study suggests that examining the roles of job characteristics in socialization contexts benefits the literature by providing a much deeper understanding of how organizations can facilitate the newcomer socialization process. Despite the importance of job characteristics (Saks and Gruman 2012), previous socialization studies exploring the roles of organizations have mainly focused on organizational socialization tactics (Jones 1986; Van Maanen and Schein 1979). Thus, answering to the recent call for socialization literature to incorporate the job-characteristics model (Batistič 2018), this study highlights that organizations can help newcomer emotional socialization by assigning them with tasks requiring high levels of interactions with insiders (i.e., task interdependence). In a similar vein, allowing newcomers to work in close physical proximity with other organizational members can facilitate emotional socialization processes. That is, providing such means during organizational entry can help newcomers to become interconnected with experienced insiders because they would be in a better situation to acquire emotional socialization relevant information, which leads to better adjustment to the new workplace. Future research should endeavor to explore additional job characteristics to advance our understanding of organizational socialization processes.

Fourth, the emotional model of organizational socialization provides insight into the mechanisms of how socialization tactics at the organizational level turn into socialization outcomes. Although associations between organizational socialization tactics and socialization outcomes are well-established (Bauer et al. 2007; Ashforth et al. 2007), explanations for why this effect exists are still in a nascent state. This study echoes the sentiment of several socialization scholars (Klein and Heuser 2008; Saks and Ashforth 1997; Saks et al. 2007) arguing that we need more research to better understand the mechanisms underlying how organizational socialization tactics influence socialization outcomes. Thus, the emotional model of organizational socialization provides insight into a novel mechanism of why and how such relationships exist. Specifically, adjustment to organizational culture, especially emotional culture, can explain the mechanisms of how institutionalized socialization tactics energize newcomers’ better adjustment.

Lastly, the emotional model of organizational socialization provides insight on how to facilitate newcomers’ P–O fit perceptions and organizational identification. How newcomers become psychologically embedded in the organization, which can be captured by the P–O fit and organizational identification, is one of the key elements in organizational socialization. However, most previous studies have mainly explored role-relevant socialization outcomes. Indeed, despite the importance of P–O fit (Hoffman and Woehr 2006) and organizational identification (Riketta, 2005; He and Brown, 2013), only a few studies explored how to increase P–O fit (Major and Kozlowski, 1997) and organizational identification (Ashforth et al. 1998; Hurst et al. 2012; Smith et al. 2012) in the socialization context. In answering calls for research on organizational identification during organizational entry (Bauer and Erdogan 2012), the model presented in this article provides new avenues for exploring organizational identification as a key socialization outcome.

4.2. Practical Contribution

This study provides practical implications for ensuring a sustainable workplace because socializing new employees is critical in enhancing organizational performance as well as retaining the new hires. To facilitate the socialization of newcomers, organizations mostly focus on delivering formal rules and policies to the newcomers, assuming that they will learn cultural norms by trial and error. However, it is very likely that newcomers experience difficulty in learning the organizational culture, especially emotional culture, due to social costs and other personal and organizational constraints. Thus, given the importance of emotional management and expressions in social relationships, organizations need to help newcomers accurately gauge the emotional culture during entry so that they can better adjust to their new organizations. In addition, it is important for organizations to establish a healthy emotional culture. In a toxic emotional culture, when newcomers adjust to it, it may only trigger negative emotions as responses to emotion-laden situations in the workplace, which, in turn, leads to lower psychological wellbeing (Härtel 2008). Since low psychological wellbeing is detrimental for the sustainability of employees in the workplace (Ha 2018), organizations should closely work with their employees to build a healthy emotional culture.

4.3. Future Research Direction

In addition to empirically testing the presented model, the model suggests several directions to further advance the socialization literature. First, by expanding boundary conditions of the presented model, future research can explore the effects of potentially mixed or conflicting information on emotional socialization processes. Although the emotional culture emphasizes the common belief or assumptions by organizational members regarding the appropriate ways of managing one’s emotions, it is possible that teams even within the same organization have different subcultures for emotional management. For example, emotional management requirements for nurses can be different from those for housekeeping workers or cashiers working in the same hospital (Berman Brown and Brooks 2002). In addition, it is plausible that organizations may hire newcomers with the purpose of shifting the emotional culture. If this is the case, newcomers are likely to experience discrepancies in terms of emotional culture-relevant information between what they receive from the organizations and what they acquire from other organizational members. Such approaches could provide a much deeper understanding of emotional socialization processes as well as answer the calls for socialization research at multiple levels within organizations (Allen et al. 2017).

Second, future research can examine the effects of newcomer diversity on emotional socialization processes. Newcomers from minority groups experience not only reality shock but also confront diversity-related issues, such as race-based stereotypes or discriminations. In other words, compared to newcomers in majority groups, minority newcomers are likely to experience extra tensions and stress in their socialization processes. In the context of emotional socialization, newcomers in minority racial groups may have different emotional rules than the organizational members in the majority racial group. For example, Wingfield (2010), based on interviews with African-American professionals, showed that minority professionals face two racialized emotional rulesets, one that applies to all workers, and the other that is different from the rules for the minority group (i.e., Caucasians). As a result, compared to newcomers in majority racial groups, it is very likely that minority newcomers experience greater difficulty in understanding and adjusting to the emotional culture of their new organizations. Gender may also matter in facilitating or slowing down the emotional socialization process. For example, Simpson and Stroh (2004) showed that women conform to feminine emotional rules more easily, whereas men conform to masculine emotional rules more easily. Hence, whether newcomers are in minority gender groups may affect the speed of emotional socialization processes. Overall, the exploration of newcomer diversity would further enrich our understanding of how newcomers from different demographic groups may experience different emotional socialization processes.

5. Conclusions

This article reviewed the roles of emotions in organizational socialization processes and proposed an emotional model of organizational socialization. The model implies that newcomers who adjust better to the emotional culture are likely to socialize successfully into their new organizations, which, in turn, helps organizations establish a sustainable workplace. Indeed, many aspects, including newcomers’ proactivity, organizational socialization tactics (i.e., institutionalized tactics), job characteristics (i.e., a high degree of task interdependence), and the design of organizational space (i.e., physical proximity) during organizational entry, play significant roles in facilitating the processes of newcomers’ emotional socialization (i.e., high P–O fit and organizational identification).