TY - JOUR
T1 - Feeling negative or positive about fresh blood? Understanding veterans’ affective reactions toward newcomer entry in teams from an affective events perspective
AU - Liu, Yihao
AU - Song, Yifan
AU - Trainer, Hayley
AU - Carter, Dorothy
AU - Zhou, Le
AU - Wang, Zheng
AU - Chiang, Jack Ting-ju
N1 - Funding Information:
Hayley Trainer and Dorothy Carter’s work on this research was partially sponsored by the U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, Department of the Army (Cooperative Agreement No. W911NF-19-2-0173). The views expressed in this research are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. government. Their work was also partially supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under Grant/Contract/Agreement No. 80NSSC18K0511, issued through the Human Research Program. Le Zhou’s work on this research was partly supported by the National Science Foundation (Grant 1533151). Jack Ting-Ju Chiang’s work on this research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant 72072005)
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 American Psychological Association
PY - 2022/9/15
Y1 - 2022/9/15
N2 - To meet the ever-changing work demands in today’s organizations, new employees are often placed into existing work teams. Although research on organizational socialization has advanced our understanding of how newcomers adjust after joining a team, it remains largely unclear how team veterans navigate the same period of adjustment. Drawing upon affective events theory, we conceptualize newcomer entry into a team as a salient affective event that can trigger multiplex affective reactions among team veterans and ultimately shape team functioning (i.e., team processes and team performance). We propose that when a newcomer differs more from veterans in relational characteristics, such as trait likeability, veterans will have stronger negative affective reactions (i.e., stronger negative affect and weaker positive affect), whereas when the newcomer differs more from veterans in task-related characteristics, such as educational background, veterans will have stronger positive affective reactions (i.e., weaker negative affect and stronger positive affect) after newcomer entry. In addition, we propose that team performance prior to newcomer entry attenuates the strength of the relationships between newcomer–veteran dissimilarities and veteran affective reactions. We tested our hypotheses in a laboratory simulation (Study 1) and a field survey study (Study 2). The results provided support for our theoretical model that the entry of a newcomer can bring multiplex affective consequences for veterans, depending on the type of newcomer dissimilarity to the team and the team’s prior performance.
AB - To meet the ever-changing work demands in today’s organizations, new employees are often placed into existing work teams. Although research on organizational socialization has advanced our understanding of how newcomers adjust after joining a team, it remains largely unclear how team veterans navigate the same period of adjustment. Drawing upon affective events theory, we conceptualize newcomer entry into a team as a salient affective event that can trigger multiplex affective reactions among team veterans and ultimately shape team functioning (i.e., team processes and team performance). We propose that when a newcomer differs more from veterans in relational characteristics, such as trait likeability, veterans will have stronger negative affective reactions (i.e., stronger negative affect and weaker positive affect), whereas when the newcomer differs more from veterans in task-related characteristics, such as educational background, veterans will have stronger positive affective reactions (i.e., weaker negative affect and stronger positive affect) after newcomer entry. In addition, we propose that team performance prior to newcomer entry attenuates the strength of the relationships between newcomer–veteran dissimilarities and veteran affective reactions. We tested our hypotheses in a laboratory simulation (Study 1) and a field survey study (Study 2). The results provided support for our theoretical model that the entry of a newcomer can bring multiplex affective consequences for veterans, depending on the type of newcomer dissimilarity to the team and the team’s prior performance.
KW - Affective event theory
KW - Newcomer adjustment
KW - Team performance
KW - Team processes
KW - Team veterans
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U2 - 10.1037/apl0001044
DO - 10.1037/apl0001044
M3 - Article
C2 - 36107685
SN - 0021-9010
VL - 108
SP - 728
EP - 749
JO - Journal of Applied Psychology
JF - Journal of Applied Psychology
IS - 5
ER -