Newcomers’ Socialization Tactics and Affective Commitment: Interplay of Perceived Organizational Support and Prior Relationships

Socialization is a necessary process that helps to manage new talent in the organization in order to survive and thrive in the global market. Numerous studies show that organizational socialization tactics affect workers’ affective commitment. However, the processes through which affective commitment is established during socialization is still unclear. We propose the socialization tactics generate newcomer's perceived organizational support (POS) and develop affective commitment. Furthermore, pre-establish links within the organization play a contingency role in the socialization process. Surprisingly, there is no study that theoretically and empirically investigates these referral’s effects on newcomers’ socialization process and its workplace outcomes. We conducted a quantitative sectional survey from 228 newcomers of different organizations. The findings reveal that socialization tactics positively relate to affective commitment through the mediation of POS and the POS-affective commitment is stronger when prior relationships are high. However, this contingent effect does not empirically support the socialization tactics-POS relationship. The implications are discussed, and future directions are provided.