Unit 2, Lecture 1: Organizational Socialization Concepts

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Training and Development

• Prof. John Kammeyer-Mueller
• MGT 4301

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Plan

• Where we were
• Understand the basics of organizational staffing
• Where we wanted to be
• Understand the concepts underlying socialization
  and commitment
• How we know how were doing
• What is an organizational culture?
• What are the most common stressful experiences
  for organizational newcomers?
• What is socialization?
• What is the distinction between institutional and
  organizational socialization?

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The Cartographic Method of Commitment

• Where am I?
• I have employees and I want them to have the
  right attitudes and skills

• What is my path?
• Develop socialization, training, and development
  practices
• How do I know if Im making progress?
• Employee attitude surveys
• Performance on the job
• Turnover rates

• Where do I want to be?
• I want to have a pool of highly committed
  employees who know what they need to do and
  remain with the company

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Metrics for Training and Development

• Services
• Structured orientation and training sessions
• Facilitated mentoring and small group
  interactions
• Patterns of job assignments
• Costs
• Classroom time
• Expense of hiring trainers
• Attitudes
• Satisfaction and commitment of employees
• Role clarity and reductions in stress
• Performance
• Increased ability to do basic job tasks
• Ability to perform new job tasks

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A Basic Mental Map for HRWhat HR Do You Need to
Make a Company Work?

• Develop an Overarching Strategy
• What does the company do, with whom are they
  competing, what makes this company unique?

• Acquire Staff
• Who makes a good employee?
• How do we get these people to apply?
• How are people screened?
• How are people selected?

• Train and Develop
• Can we help new hires feel like part of the
  company?
• How do we teach employees the skills they need?
• How do we encourage civility?
• How do we measure performance?

• Compensation and Benefits
• How can we match our pay offers to the market?
• How do we pay people who are working in different
  job levels?
• What types of non-cash benefits can we offer to
  employees?

• Performance management
• What are the things that motivate employees at
  work?
• What prevents employees from performing
  effectively?
• Are there incentives that we should be offering?

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The Concept of Culture

• How many people have been to a foreign country?
  Describe what was different
• On the surface
• Clothing (What types of clothing? What does
  clothing mean)
• Food and drink (What is eaten? When? How is
  drinking seen?)
• Buildings (Size, types of materials, functions)
• Going deeper
• Political systems (authority, role of police,
  social services)
• Interpersonal relations (proximal space,
  appropriate topics, power distance)
• Media and communications (openness, types of
  information)

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Culture

• The core of this unit is on culture
• Collective understanding of a context
• Shared meanings, behaviors, and rituals
• Well discuss how people interface with culture
• Learning about the culture
• Organizational reward distribution
• Deciding on cultural membership

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Learning About the UF Culture

• Think of what you learned quickly and how
• From the school as a whole
• From your academic department
• From other students
• What ways are culture transmitted?
• Rituals and ceremonies
• Standard clothing and uniforms
• Stories and legends

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What is a Culture?

• Definition
• A system of shared meaning held by members of a
  social group that distinguishes that group from
  others
• Things that convey culture
• Rules, regulations, stories, uniforms, typical
  social interactions, punishment and reward systems

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Strong and Weak Cultures

• Strong culture
• Values strongly held and widely shared
• What are the advantages of a strong culture?
• Are there disadvantages to a strong culture?
• Levels of culture
• Dominant culture
• Held across the organization
• Embodies the core values of the organization
• Subcultures
• Usually more localized
• What are some types of subcultures?

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How Can Companies Maintain a Culture?

• Attraction-selection-attrition (ASA)
• People and organizations seldom change
• Fit is like two puzzle pieces
• Basic model
• Only people who think theyll fit apply
• Managers hire those similar to themselves
• Turnover occurs if later evaluation shows theres
  a misfit

• Organizational socialization tactics
• People and organizations often change
• Fit is like molding clay into just the right
  shape
• Basic model
• Organizations have strong social power
• Employees desire to fit in with social situations
• Those who are able to adapt themselves are those
  who are promoted

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Stages of Becoming an Organizational Member
Outcomes
Productivity
Commitment
Pre-arrival
Encounter
Metamorphosis
Turnover
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A Model of Commitment Formation

• New entrants
• Compliance commitment
• Rewards are critical
• Low emotional investment

• Early entrants
• Identification commitment
• Motivated by sense of obligation
• Feeling of participation

• Full members
• Internalization commitment
• Fully accept goals of the organization
• Self merges with organization

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The MIT Socialization Studies by Edgar Schein

• Interviews with Sloan MBA graduates entering
  their first jobs
• Most described a harsh reality shock
• A gap between expectations and actual jobs
• Major dimensions of adjustment
• Surprise
• The shock when one realizes work organizations
  are different than expected
• Sensemaking
• Trying to understand the unique, often tangled
  web of logic underlying real work organizations

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Critical Socialization Tasks

• Understanding how you fit in
• They let me go, and Im going, but I dont know
  where.
• I had the problem of never having a problem
  which was clearly definable, hence had a hard
  time getting feedback, hence needed some
  direction on which problems are useful, which
  ones can be helpful to the company.
• Im the man without a home, changing departments
  every three months because of this training
  program first I identified with the trainee
  group, then had split loyalties between them and
  departments.

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Critical Socialization Tasks

• Understanding how people interact
• All the problems I encounter boil down to
  communication and human relations.
• I thought I could sell people with logic, and
  was amazed at the hidden agendas people have,
  irrational objections really bright people will
  come up with stupid excusesthey have their own
  little empires to worry about.
• I ran into conflict with procedures...the
  informal methods of handling things, shaped by
  people far higher upyou cant buck that.

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Role dysfunctions Predictors and Outcomes
Situational Factors

• Emotional reactions
• Stress
• Unhappiness
• Confusion

Low satisfaction and low commitment
Lack of feedback and low task identity
Poor leadership and weak structure
Role ambiguity

• Cognitive reactions
• Belief company has no goals
• Belief company does not care

Person Factors

• Work withdrawal
• Absence
• Low effort
• Turnover

Lack of knowledge of the job
Low core self-evaluations
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What Information is Considered Important by
Newcomers?
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What Information is Considered Important by
Newcomers?

• Those who seek more information are more
  satisfied
• Those who seek more information also tend to
  perform better
• Those who seek more information are less likely
  to turnover
• Technical information seems to be comparatively
  less important
• Morrison, 1993 (AMJ)

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So What Can Organizations Do?

• A few key concepts in socialization
• Increase early feedback to improve task identity
  and sense of purpose
• Ensure that supervisors provide a clear direction
  and explain the rules
• Give employees resources to learn about the job
  and the company as soon as possible
• Teach employees how to cope with adjustment (to
  offset personality-based difficulties)

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Pratt Managing Identification Among Amway
Distributors

• Identification
• An individuals beliefs about his/her
  organization become self-referential or
  self-defining (Pratt, 1998)
• This study also examines disidentification, which
  is developing a firm perception of not being part
  of an organization
• Two primary practices
• Sensebreaking
• Destruction of ones system of meaning and
  inspiring questions about ones identity
• Sensemaking
• Attribution of meaning to a target due to the
  placement of this target in a mental framework

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Pratt Managing Identification Among Amway
Distributors

• Context
• A network marketing organization
• Members sell products outside the business
  location
• Distributors engage in sponsoring new recruits
• Successful distributors are encouraged to give
  instruction to new recruits
• No formal organizational hierarchy
• Unique employment relationship
• They are not employees, they are independent
  contractors
• Need to pay to participate
• Based on the philosophy that anyone can do it

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Pratt Managing Identification Among Amway
Distributors

• Data collection methods
• Semiovert participant observation
• Joined the organization but told everyone he was
  a researcher
• This was a 2-year process of immersion
• Open ended interviews
• Started with broad questions
• Follow ups were for clarification, and proceeded
  using the words developed in the interviews
• Included both active members and those who had
  left the organization
• Archival data, including organizational
  recruiting and sales materials

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Pratt Managing Identification Among Amway
Distributors

• Dream building
• Helping distributors set personal and sales goals
• Positive programming
• Surrounding yourself with uplifting people who
  support the organization
• Results suggest that when dream building was
  accompanied by positive programming,
  identification was high, but when dream building
  was not accompanied by positive programming,
  disidentification occurred

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Pratt Managing Identification Among Amway
Distributors

• Sensebreaking tactics building dreams
• Ask people to identify what their dreams for the
  future are
• Financial independence
• Freedom from having a j.o.b.
• Helping your family
• Providing a useful service through work
• Dreams and goals for the future are encouraged by
  providing examples of the lifestyles of highly
  successful members

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Pratt Managing Identification Among Amway
Distributors

• Sensebreaking tactics ideal selves
• After dreams are described, the distance between
  current and ideal self is emphasized
• Non-Amway life is a rut or comfort zone
• Those who continue to live without following
  their dreams are losers
• The idea of a comfort zone is constantly held up
  as an example of negativityits a trap
• Longer-term representatives tended to take on
  larger social dreams like helping others and
  preserving the American way of life

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Pratt Managing Identification Among Amway
Distributors

• Sensegiving tactics
• Associations develop with upline mentors
• Their official publication statement
• Picture yourself pregnant with a dream. The
  mentor stands over you and helps you relax and
  breathe during the painful contractions while
  your dream is in labor. The mentor assists the
  dream don the birth canal and out into the light
  of day. The mentor holds your dream up by its
  heels and spanks it to life
• There is a strong sense of personal bonding with
  mentors and others in the organizationpeople who
  are fully integrated are really given a great
  deal of personal and financial support
• They contrast Amway relationships with
  traditional supervisor relationships, and suggest
  Amway relationships are much more interpersonally
  satisfying and helpful
• Friends and family who dont support your
  participation in Amway are seen as not true
  friends, because they dont support your dreams
  sufficiently

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Pratt Managing Identification Among Amway
Distributors

• Identification
• Agreed with sensebreaking activities
• Fully participated in sensemaking
• Ambivalent identification
• Sensemaking didnt take hold they questioned
  themselves but didnt necessarily think Amway had
  the answers
• Usually lacked a feeling of continued interest in
  using Amway to achieve goals
• Disidentification
• Felt a need to actively reject the organization
• Typically had feelings that sensebreaking wasnt
  working
• Also felt like they had been deceived or that
  their potential wasnt being realized

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Van Maanen Scheins Model of Socialization
Tactics

• Context
• Collective vs. individual
• Do many new recruits come in at once to be
  socialized, or is it a one-on-one process with a
  mentor or co-worker?
• Formal vs. informal
• Is there a program thats separate from the
  normal work day for teaching new recruits about
  the company, or is it more learn as you go?

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Van Maanen Scheins Model of Socialization
Tactics

• Content
• Fixed vs. random
• Do all recruits have the same content for
  socialization, or are different topics emphasized
  based on the specific job or individual?
• Sequential vs. variable
• Does training proceed in a standard set of steps,
  or do recruits learn about different aspects of
  the job at different times?

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Van Maanen Scheins Model of Socialization
Tactics

• Social aspects
• Serial vs. disjunctive
• Are recruits introduced to other members of the
  organization?
• Divestiture vs. investiture
• Are the distinct contributions of each individual
  emphasized, or are new recruits broken down and
  told to do things in one specific way?

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Divergent methods of socialization for different
goals

• Individual
• Individual, informal, random, variable,
  disjunctive, investiture
• Consequences
• Where do we see this?

• Institutional
• Collective, formal, fixed, sequential, serial,
  divestiture
• Consequences
• Where do we see this?

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Socialization Tactics and Person-Organization Fit
Cable Parsons, 2001 Note respondents reported
their own values and the organizations values at
separate points in time
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An Example of Building Culture The Smile Factory

• What does Disney want from its employees?
• So how do they get it?
• Selection methods
• Careful screening for being conservative in dress
  and appearance, healthy, and non-descript
• Placement methods
• All applications are for a job at Disneyland
  but not for specific positions
• Centralized decision making structure does the
  actual placement

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An Example of Building Culture The Smile Factory

• Lots of social interactions
• Encouraged to primarily affiliate with other
  Disney employees
• Parties outside of work and dating
• Strong social structure
• Ambassadors and tour guides
• Ride operators
• Sweepers and groundskeepers
• Food and concession people
• Symbols of status (because pay differentials are
  low)
• Uniforms
• Specific titles for jobs

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Divergent methods of socialization for different
goals

• Occupational socialization and the professions
• For many jobs the institutional part occurs at
  the occupational level
• Medical school, law school, dental school,
  engineering, research science training
• Once someone graduates theyre free to decide as
  they want on the job but only after their core
  priorities are entrenched
• Important point institutional socialization does
  not mean you dont think for yourself, it just
  means there are certain guidelines for thinking

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Divergent methods of socialization for different
goals

• Some companies use very little socialization
• No attempt is made to build up or tear down
• People thrown into the job with minimal
  preparation
• Examples?
• Why do some companies do this?
• What are the potential outcomes of this decision?
• Who socializes newcomers in the absence of
  official company information?

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Wrap Up

• Where we were
• Understand the basics of organizational staffing
• Where we wanted to be
• Understand the concepts underlying socialization
  and commitment
• How we know how were doing
• What is an organizational culture?
• What are the most common stressful experiences
  for organizational newcomers?
• What is socialization?
• What is the distinction between institutional and
  organizational socialization?