Newcomers’ happiness at work trajectories and their relation to servant leadership and innovative performance

Newcomers bring vital innovation potential to organizations. Although research highlights how leadership and happiness can drive innovation, we lack knowledge about developmental patterns of newcomers’ happiness at work (HAW) and how these relate to leadership and innovative performance. Therefore, this study aims to explore longitudinal patterns of newcomers’ HAW development. We also investigate initial levels of servant leadership as a predictor and innovative performance as an outcome of distinct HAW trajectories. We used longitudinal data from 340 organizational newcomers with seven waves throughout their first year of employment. Latent class growth analysis identified three distinct classes of HAW trajectories: high and stable (43%), medium and decreasing (52%), and low and decreasing (5%). Higher levels of servant leadership experienced immediately after organizational entry were related to a higher likelihood of belonging to the high and stable class. The high and stable class demonstrated the highest level of innovative performance in the latter half of the first year. Our findings indicate that servant leadership is related to a higher and more stable development of newcomers’ HAW and that stable trajectories facilitate their innovative performance. We discuss contributions to research regarding HAW, newcomer socialization, entry experiences, and innovative performance and present practical implications.