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Article
Understanding the Consequences of Newcomer Proactive Behaviors: The Moderating Contextual Role of Servant Leadership
Journal of Vocational Behavior
  • Talya N. Bauer, Portland State University
  • Serge Perrot, PSL Research University
  • Robert C. Liden, University of Illinois at Chicago
  • Berrin Erdogan, Portland State University
Document Type
Post-Print
Publication Date
6-1-2019
Subjects
  • Industrial psychology,
  • Organizational behavior,
  • Career changes -- Management,
  • Servant leadership,
  • Socialization
Abstract

Proactive newcomers are more successful in terms of integration and job satisfaction, than newcomers who are less proactive. However, it is unclear whether contextual factors, such as the leadership style experienced by newcomers, matter. To address this gap in the literature, we gathered data at three times from 247 new employees across their first six months after joining a company in France. Given that past research has found that newcomers play an active role in their own adjustment process, in the current study we investigate how newcomer proactive behaviors relate to the key outcomes of job satisfaction, person-job fit, and person-organization fit. We examined the degree to which servant leadership moderated the proposed relationships. Results revealed that servant leadership generally benefited employee socialization outcomes, especially for employees low in proactive behavior. But at low levels of perceived servant leadership, followers were able to compensate for this leadership deficiency the more they engaged in proactive behaviors. Although proactive behaviors did not surpass servant leadership in relationships with job satisfaction, P-J, and P-O fit, follower proactive behaviors had the strongest relationships to these outcomes under conditions of low servant leadership. Specifically, the results suggest that newcomer engagement in proactive behaviors is especially important to newcomer adjustment when leaders exhibit low levels of servant leadership.

Description

This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain.

The version of record may be found at https://doi.org/10.1016/ j.jvb.2019.05.001

DOI
10.1016/j.jvb.2019.05.001
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/28635
Citation Information
T.N. Bauer, S. Perrot, R.C. Liden, et al., Understanding the consequences of newcomer proactive behaviors: The moderating contextual role of servant leadership, Journal of Vocational Behavior, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2019.05.001