Professional Socialization for Mid-Level Student Affairs Practitioners at Small Liberal Arts Colleges: Understanding How Organizational Culture Is Share

This study explored how mid-level student affairs professionals professionally socialized to their work roles in order to understand how this socialization process contributed to the exchange of institutional values, norms, and customs within the work place at two small liberal arts colleges. This study is structured around three questions: 1) how do mid-level student affairs administrators describe their professional socialization experiences in relation to their work role? 2) How have the mid-level student affairs administrators' understandings of their socialization experiences been influenced by institutional culture? 3) How have the mid-level student affairs administrators' socialization experiences influenced how they orient others to their department? This study was framed conceptually around situated learning theory and interpretive phenomenological analysis to understand the professional experience of six MLSAAs working at two small liberal arts colleges located on the East Coast of the United States. Several themes with regard to how MLSAAs understood their professional socialization to their work roles and how they subsequently led and socialized others within the context of their institutions' culture were identified: 1) self-identity and its influence on first impressions in the workplace, 2) subsequent impressions and its relationship to work behavior adaptations, and 3) leadership behavior within the context of understood institutional culture. The results suggest that: 1) professional socialization was a multi-phased process, 2) administrators developed dual work identities to address new organizational culture shifts, and 3) administrators adapted their leadership behavior based on organizational shifts and supervise with a compensatory style.