The impact of organizational socialization tactics on newcomers’ organizational citizenship behaviors : The mediating effect of perceived organizational support

This study investigates the impact of organizational socialization tactics on newcomers’ organizational citizenship behaviors. We explains this relationship with the concept of perceived organizational support, which refers to the extent to which individuals perceive that the organization recognizes their contributions and takes care of their well-being. We expect that the more institutionalized the organization’s socialization tactics are, the more organizational support individuals perceive, consequently increasing the performance of organizational citizenship behaviors. We performed a survey targeting 450 newcomers in domestic companies, and adopted 382 data for path analyses based on the structural equation modeling. As the result, in all the three dimensions of socialization tactics (content, context, social), the extent to which socialization tactics are institutionalized is positively related to the perception of organizational support. It also has the positive relationship with individuals’ organizational citizenship behaviors, being fully mediated by the perceived organizational support. More specifically, context socialization tactics shows the highest level of impact both on the perceived organizational support and organizational citizenship behaviors, whereas social tactics has the lowest level of impact. These results imply that the range of effects the organizational socialization has on the newcomers’ attitudes and behaviors should be more extended and detailed.