The Research On The Effects Of Newcomers' Voice Behaviors On Organizational Socialization

Newcomers are necessary for organizational growth and development,ensuring that they adjust to the organization as soon as possible has always been the focus of scholars.Early research on organizational socialization has mainly explored the organization-level factors promoting newcomers to adjust to the organization.More recently,newcomer proactivity has been paid more and more attention.However,scholars have mostly focused on its benefits,while has ignored that it may bring negative effects.Besides,research on newcomer proactivity has mainly focused on how newcomers seek information or feedback to promote socialization,but few scholars have noticed that newcomers also actively provide information or advice to organization insiders.Accordingly,this study aims at exploring what and how newcomers' voice behavior affects organizational socialization and reveals the doubleedged effects of newcomer proactivity on their socialization.In this way,this study makes up for gaps in the research on organizational socialization and provides theoretical guidance for management practice.According to previous research,this study proposed a theoretical model and research hypotheses with the path from newcomers' voice behavior to organizational socialization outcomes via supervisor perception and supervisor support based on the interpersonal attraction theory and social persuasion theory.Accordingly,the research questionnaire was designed by adopting well-developed scales.Then,the questionnaire was revised and refined through consulting experts,interviewing employees,small sample pretest,and group discussion.The questionnaire survey was conducted in two large enterprises in China,and 291 valid samples were acquired finally.After analyzing the reliability and validity of the data and testing the common method variance,hierarchical regression analysis,dominance analysis,and bootstrap method were used to test the direct effects,mediating effects,and moderating effects.The empirical results indicated that: compared with prohibitive voice,newcomers' promotive voice was more significantly related to supervisors' perceived competence.On the contrary,newcomers' prohibitive voice was more significantly related to supervisors' perceived willingness than newcomers' promotive voice.Supervisors' perceived competence mediated the relationship between newcomers' promotive voice behavior and supervisor support,and supervisors' perceived willingness mediated the relationship between newcomers' prohibitive voice and supervisor support.Supervisor support was positively related to role clarity,task mastery,and social adjustment.Voice constructiveness significantly moderated the relationship between newcomers' voice behavior and supervisors' perception.Specifically,the more of constructiveness voice behavior,the stronger the positive effect of newcomers' promotive voice on supervisors' perceived competence,but the weaker the negative effect of newcomers' prohibitive voice on supervisors' perceived willingness.Besides,voice constructiveness significantly moderated the indirect relationship between newcomers' prohibitive voice and supervisor support.Specifically,the more of constructiveness voice behavior,the weaker the indirect effect of newcomers' prohibitive voice on supervisor support via supervisors' perceived willingness.According to the empirical results,this study draws the following conclusions:First,newcomers' proactive behaviors do have double-edged effects on organizational socialization.Newcomers' voice behavior can affect the supervisors' perceived competence or willingness towards newcomers,which makes supervisors decide to provide support for newcomers,and finally affect newcomers' organizational socialization.Promotive voice indicates that newcomers have the competence to help the supervisors achieve the goals or complete the tasks,so the supervisors are more willing to interact with newcomers,such as providing support or help to promote their successful socialization.On the contrary,prohibitive voice can make supervisors suspect the willingness and loyalty of newcomers,so supervisors' support or help towards newcomers may be lack,which is not beneficial for newcomer socialization.Second,newcomers' promotive voice and prohibitive voice have different effects on supervisors' perception.Promotive voice indicates that newcomers have promotion focus,innovation competence,and can stimulate the positive emotions of the team.In contrast,if newcomers' prohibitive voice can't accurately describe the potential problems or risks,newcomers will be considered by the supervisors as just showing off.Hence,promotive voice is more likely to arouse the supervisors' perceived competence towards newcomers than prohibitive voice.On the other hand,newcomers' prohibitive voice calls into question the reasonable behaviors that supervisors think,and criticizes decisions made by supervisors.This always results in the supervisors' negative affection and making supervisors guess newcomers are not willing to follow them.In contrast,promotive voice aligns with organizational or supervisors' goals,and it can't trigger the supervisors' strong response.Therefore,newcomers' prohibitive voice is more strongly related to supervisors' perceived willingness towards newcomers than promotive voice.Third,constructiveness makes voice behavior more easily accepted.If the solutions or suggestions made by newcomers are accompanied with compelling evidence and accurately describing,supervisors can believe that these solutions are likely to be successfully implemented,thus evaluate the newcomers more positively.In the same vein,supervisors can appreciate the prohibitive voice when newcomers can accurately and appropriately identify the problem with solutions rather than just criticizing.In all,voice constructiveness can improve supervisors' positive evaluation towards newcomers,which in turn they are willing to provide supports and favors to newcomers.Finally,supervisor support can effectively promote newcomers' organizational socialization.Generally,the supervisor is an important source of guidance,information,and feedback for newcomers in the workplace.The results have indicated that supervisor support is beneficial to newcomers' emotional support,improves their sense of psychological safety and belonging,and makes them dare to express themselves.At the same time,supervisor support can provide newcomers with information and feedback,which helps they can more effectively complete organizational tasks and goals.Therefore,supervisor support is beneficial for newcomers to clarify their roles,master job skills,and adjust to the organization.There are several innovative points:First,this study points out the double-edged effects of newcomers' proactive behavior on organizational socialization.Previous research on socialization has mainly focused on the positive effects of newcomers' proactive behavior,while has ignored the potential negative influences of that.This study on the negative impact of newcomers' voice behavior advances the understanding of newcomers' proactive behavior.Moreover,this study also contributes to the research on the relationship between newcomers' proactive behavior and organizational socialization,and lays the foundation for further research on newcomers' proactive behavior in the future.Second,this study reveals the mechanism by which newcomers' voice behavior affects organizational socialization,and further advances the theoretical understanding of the relationship between them.Based on interpersonal attraction theory,this study uses supervisors' competence/willingness perception and supervisor support as mediating variables to construct the mechanism.Moreover,this study verifies the reliability and effectiveness of the theoretical model through empirical analysis.This study contributes to unfold the “black box” of how newcomers' voice behavior affects organizational socialization,deepen the theoretical understanding of the internal relationship between newcomers' proactive behavior and organizational socialization,and fill the gap in this research field.Third,this study expands the research on supervisors' responses to voice from the perspective of interpersonal attraction.There are still different views on the relationship between voice behavior and supervisors' response.Drawing on interpersonal attraction theory,this study explores the cognitive process of how the supervisor responds to different types of newcomers' voice behavior from the perspective of person perception.This study enriches the research on differentiated effect between promotive voice and prohibitive voice,and provides a new theoretical perspective for exploring the relationship between voice behavior and supervisors' responses.Finally,this study contributes to the contingent research on voice behavior by exploring the moderating factor of newcomers' voice behavior from the perspective of voice quality.Previous research has mainly focused on the influence of voice frequency and style on managerial responses,while has ignored voice quality.Hence,this study adopts voice constructiveness as a moderator to explore the boundary conditions of effects of newcomers' voice behavior.In this way,this study contributes to remedy the deficiency of research on the relationship between voice quality and voice behavior,sharpen the understanding of the effect of voice behavior,and enrich the contingent study of voice behavior.