A longitudinal investigation on the factors affecting newcomers' adjustment: evidence from Japanese organizations

Abstract

Using the longitudinal survey data of newcomers working for Japanese firms, this study demonstrates that the socialization tactics used by Japanese firms were positively related to the degree of socialization of newcomers, which eventually correlated positively with the time-series differences in organizational commitment and achievement motivation from the first year (T1) to the second year (T2) of their organizational entry, and negatively with the longitudinal change in turnover intention from T1 to T2. In addition, the results show that the newcomers' attitudes toward their pre-entry job search efforts, as with their entry (T1), had a negative influence on the change in value commitment from T1 to T2, indicating that those who rated their past job search activities as successful tended, as of their entry into the organization, to diminish their level of acceptance of their organization's values over a year. Findings are used to discuss how firms can effectively manage their entry-level employees to facilitate their adjustment and retention.

Keywords:

• Japan
• longitudinal study
• organizational socialization tactics
• pre-entry job search experiences

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 48th annual meeting of the Academy of International Business (AIB) held in Beijing, China on 23–26 June 2006. A part of this research was supported by the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B) awarded to the first author (No. 19730264) and the second author (No. 19730280).

Notes

1. Prior to conducting the main survey in this research, we conducted a pilot survey of the Japanese newcomer samples (n = 352) in order to see how Chao et al.'s (1994) measure of socialization perceptions can be subdivided into several factors. Running a factor analysis with a Varimax rotation generated only two dimensions of ‘organization’ and ‘task’ with the cutoff eigen value being 1.0. The reason why the ‘group’ dimension of socialization content could not be an independent factor in the Japanese samples may be that Japanese newcomers tend to see their organization as an extension of their work group. It seems likely that their perceptions of organization and group socialization would be mixed, and thereby these two contents of socialization were inseparable for Japanese newcomers.