Improving employees’ proactive behaviors at workplace: The role of organizational socialization tactics and work engagement

Abstract

This study examines the relationship between organizational socialization tactics (context, content, and social tactics), employees' work engagement and their proactive behaviors (relationship building, positive framing and self-management). Based on a sample of 675 Vietnamese young graduated employees with highly academic background, under 35 years old and with less than 5-year working experience at their organization, the results of questionnaire survey showed that institutionalized socialization tactics can increase Vietnamese employees' proactive behaviors and their engagement to work, and in its turn, work engagement encourages proactive behaviors at workplace. Among three types of socialization tactics, social tactics were the strongest predictor on all proactive behaviors. Our results also documented a partially mediating role of work engagement in the relationship between social tactics and proactive behavior, and fully mediating role in the relationship between context, content tactics, and proactive behavior. Our results hence support the interactionist perspective in that what happens in work settings is not a result of sole organization's practice nor individual effort; rather, it is the outcome of the interaction between the organization and the individual.

Improving newcomers’ work engagement: role of organizational socialization tactics with serial mediation

“…For instance, Zhang and his colleagues used the SDT lens to find that proactive socialization had a significant positive relationship with intrinsic motivation and positively related to job performance (Zhang et al, 2014). Based on these findings, proactive socializing might be considered an important variable that can help satisfy the fundamental employee requirements in the workplace by generating supportive work environments and their impact on workplace design and task characteristics (Nguyen et al, 2020).…”

“…Song et al, 2015). Moreover, organizational socialization tactics strongly increase Vietnamese employees' engagement in their work (Nguyen et al, 2020).…”

“…Newcomers' proactive behaviors, such as relationship building, are essential to the new employees' socialization process (Nguyen et al, 2020). It is critical for new workers since it aids in forming situational identities, forming friendship networks, and communicating organizational policies (Ashford & Black, 1996).…”

“…

The current study uses the interactionist socialization approach, for example, OSTs and PSBs, to discuss how OST and newcomers' PSBs influence their work engagement with the organization.Work engagement has been a vital topic in management research, although newcomers' work engagement has got little attention in the socialization literature (Saks & Gruman, 2012.Literature has highlighted the positive relationship between OSTs and newcomer work engagement in the Chinese context (Nguyen et al, 2020; Z. Song et al, 2015).

…”

“…Literature has highlighted the positive relationship between OSTs and newcomer work engagement in the Chinese context (Nguyen et al, 2020; Z. Song et al, 2015).…”