The Relationship Between Stress And Proactive Socialization Behaviors In Newcomer Adjustment:the Mediating Role Of Regulatory Focus

Due to the difficulty of identity transformation,the phenomenon of "flash resignation" frequently appears in new employees.How to help new employees adapt to the new environment has become a hot issue.As the new employees’ proactive behaviors for adapting to the environment,proactive socialization behaviors can effectively promote the organizational adjustment of new employees,which has been a concern by researchers.Current researchers believe that both personality traits and situational factors can affect proactive socialization behaviors.But most studies explore the relationship between personality traits and proactive socialization behaviors such as self-efficacy and proactive personality.Rarely studies explore how environmental characteristics affect new employees’ proactive socialization behaviors.Although work stress is the most obvious environmental characteristic for new employees,the relationship between work stress and proactive socialization behaviors and its mechanism has received less attention.Therefore,with the help of a two-dimensional stressor model,this study explores the influence of challenge and hindrance stress on proactive socialization behaviors and examines the mediating role of regulatory focus.This study consists of two sub-studies.In Study I,we collected cross-sectional data among 336 new employees.Using path analysis,we found that challenge stress was positively correlated with proactive socialization behaviors,while hindrance stress was negatively correlated with proactive socialization behaviors.There was a positive correlation between challenge stress and promotion focus,and a positive correlation between promotion focus and proactive socialization behaviors.Promotion focus mediated the effects of challenge stress and proactive socialization behaviors.There is no correlation between hindrance stress and prevention focus,prevention focus is not correlated with proactive socialization behaviors,and the mediating effect of prevention focus is not significant.In study 2,based on the same sample,we collected a 6-month longitudinal survey on new employees who were willing to continue to participate,and256 data were collected.Using cross-lagged analysis,the results show that there is a dynamic process of two-way promotion between challenge stress and proactive socialization behaviors.challenge stress can positively predict proactive socialization behaviors by promotion focus.Hindrance stress was not associated with proactive socialization behaviors.This study found that challenge stress can help new employees to show more promotion focus,thereby promoting their proactive socialization behaviors;hindrance stress can inhibit proactive socialization behaviors in the short term.In addition,the study also found that challenge stress and proactive socialization behaviors promote each other.These findings responded to the call for studying the situational factors of proactive socialization behaviors,enriched the research of the influencing mechanism of work stress and proactive socialization behavior,and also provided a new research perspective for the interaction between people and the environment.At the same time,the study suggests that organizational managers should pay attention to the intensity and type of stressors in the organizational environment to help newcomers adjust.