Organisational socialization in the context of career path changes

• Author: Marcela Rodica Luca
• Position: Transilvania University of Brasov, Romania
• Pages: 9-16

Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşov

Series VII: Social Sciences • Law • Vol. 9 (58) No. 2 - 2016

ORGANISATIONAL SOCIALIZATION

IN THE CONTEXT OF CAREER PATH

CHANGES

Marcela Rodica LUCA1

Abstract: The paper presents the main theoretical issues of the

organisational socialization: theoretical models as well as instruments used

in the field research. The research in the field of organisational socialization

is important mainly in the context of changes in career paths in recent times,

the output of the socialization process being related to work performance, job

satisfaction and organizational involvement.

Key words: organisational socialization, career, career changes

1. Introduction

Organisational socialization constitutes an interesting domain from a practical

perspective, due to the fact that, as years went by, the multi-organisational careers

became the rule and not the exception and the organisations are more and more interested

in facilitating the rapid adaptation of newcomers. It becomes a domain of study all the

more important, considering that in the last decades we have witnessed major changes on

the labour market and in the career world. Two of these changes require knowledge of the

mechanisms of organisational socialization: the multiplication of international companies

and their spread all over the world and the multi-organisational careers.

Globalisation brought along inherent ‘culture clashes’ due to the fact that international

companies came to have branches in more countries and employees coming from

different countries. Some of them work in their own country, but inside companies

pertaining to another culture, others work abroad, in the home-country of the company,

and a third category works in a third-party country, which many times presents no

similarities either with the culture of origin of the employees or with the culture of the

country where the employing company was founded. Apart from the usual impact of the

organisation on the newcomer who belongs to the same culture (the initial research

domain of the socialization was initially limited to Western companies), when cultural

differences are part of the equation, the issue of socialization becomes even more acute.

In the case of multi-organisational careers, when entering every organisation, the

individual goes through a period of organisational socialization which the organisation is

interested to shorten as much as possible.

The concept of socialization is consecrated by Schein (1968), who defined socialization

as a process of learning the ropes of a position, of training and indoctrination of the

1 Transilvania University of Brasov, Romania, marcela.luca@unitbv.ro