Imnpacts Of Psychological Capital And Organizational Socialization Tactics On Hotel Newcomers' Proximal Adjustment

The organizational socialization is the process by which a newcomer becomes an insider from being an outsider. In the transitional process, new employees attempt to establish interpersonal relationships, accept organizational culture and values, and develop the membership identification to the employment organization. In contrast, if the new employees fail to establish the effective relationships or cannot accept the culture and values of the organization, their proximal adjustment outcomes are deemed to be poor.Moreover, poor proximal outcomes could result in some negative distal outcomes such as turnover. Although a substantial progress has been made in organizational socialization research, an obvious gap-proximal outcomes being often neglected to a certain degree-still exists. In addition, research has rarely explored the influencing factors of proximal outcomes from the perspectives of both personal and organizational influences.Therefore, in this research, first, it narrows the socialization proximal outcome variables into six constructs including task mastery, fitting in, membership identification,interpersonal relationship, standing out,and role negotiation. The measurement is a favorable tool which is based on the theory of role taking and role making. Second, a new theoretical model is proposed, in which psychological capital and organizational socialization tactics are the main factors to be considered to influence each of the six proximal outcomes. Third, the model is empirically tested in newcomer sample obtained from luxury hotels on Hainan Island.The English questionnaire has been developed by reviewing organizational socialization works at home and abroad. Its Chinese counterpart has been translated from its English version. A total of 500 copies of questionnaires were sent to non-management new employees from five-star hotels in Hainan. As result, 368 valid copies of questionnaires were obtained. The data were analyzed by using SPSS 19.0 and Amos 17.0.In particular, the following three findings are as follows:Firstly, the two second-order factors, i.e., psychological capital, and organizational socialization tactics, are significantly correlated to each of the six proximal adjustment outcomes, respectively. Secondly, after controlling for the influence of psychological capital, the construct of organizational socialization tactics has a positive effect on each of the five proximal outcomes including fitting in, membership identification, interpersonal relationship, standing out and role negotiation, except for one proximal outcome, i.e., task mastery. Thirdly, when the influence of organizational socialization tactics is being controlled, psychological capital has a positive influence on each of the six proximal outcomes including task mastery, fitting in,membership identification, interpersonal relationship, standing out, and role negotiation. Finally, the paper reaches a conclusion after discussing the findings within the context of managing and developing hotel human resources.