Contributions published at Human Resource Management

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This study investigates the effects of training and development opportunities on performance and engagement of newly hired employees during their organizational socialization phase. In addition, the moderating effects of two support forms, namely leader and coworker support, on the previously mentioned relationships will be examined. Within this thesis, hypotheses are underpinned and derived from previous studies in the field of organizational socialization. To analyze these hypotheses, a conducted study from the company GfK will be leveraged within this work. This study’s results show that training and development opportunities in fact can have a positive effect on the dependent variables of performance and engagement of newly hired employees. In this respect, leader support moderates all these relations. In contrast, coworker support can only moderate the relations in which engagement of a newly hired employee is the dependent variable.

This paper investigates the influence of perceived leader integrity on job engagement and job satisfaction of fellow-employees that recently joined the organization. Thereby, Hofstede’s two dimensions power distance and individualism as measures for cultural differences are included as moderators into the analysis. The results show that integrity always positively influences job engagement and job satisfaction of newcomers. However, in individualistic cultures and/or in cultures with low power distance the effect is stronger than in collectivistic cultures and/or in cultures with high power distance. Among others, this is due to subordinate’s different expectations on their superiors in different cultures. In consequence of the growing global network it is essential to companies to teach their subordinates about cultural differences and to make sure that they possess a high degree of social skills.

Organizational Socialization is one of the key elements of the successful integration of newcomers. A successful organizational socialization makes a long-term work relationship between organisation and newcomer possible. This allows the organisation to invest its resources subtly in the newcomers’ skills without suffering a financial loss due to a high fluctuation rate. For organizational socialization to be successful many factors are important, of which social support is the most relevant one. Social support can be given from extraorganizational sources (family, partner) as well as intraorganizational sources (co-workers, supervisors). This paper illustrates the different socialization phases in the organizational socialization and its related theories. Furthermore, it highlights the relevance of social support in organizational socialization.

This thesis explores differences of the relation between leader and coworker support and organizational commitment for newcomers across cultures. For this reason, theoretical approaches, to explain this relation and the moderating effect of national culture, were elaborated based on Hofstede’s (2001) five culture dimensions. Based on an extensive literature research and existing empirical studies, hypotheses were proposed from a theoretical point of view. For the statistical analysis a data set provided by the market research institution GfK is used, which includes data from 29 countries and over 3,500 respondents, who have a tenure lower than one year. The results provide evidence indicating that support from leaders and coworkers shows an overall positive and significant impact on new employees’ organizational commitment, and thus is an effective tool in all countries to promote effective organizational socialization. The relation is stronger in societies with low power distance, low uncertainty avoidance and individualistic characteristics and is not moderated by the culture dimensions femininity-masculinity or short- and long-term orientation. The implementation of social support can be achieved by providing training and education sessions, promoting incentives for supportive employees or encouraging friendly interactions between leaders and subordinates and among coworkers. Future research is suggested to explore further determinants of effective socialization across cultures. It is important to understand these cultural differences to profit as employee as well as organization.

We seek employment so as to provide us with financial means and an occupation. Every work place has working conditions that new employees must adhere to, the new newcomer must integrate into the organization and familiarize himself with his new workplace. This process is called organizational socialization. During socialization the social environment of the work-place is important. The newcomers integration into the workplace will be made easier through the support of supervisors, work colleagues’ or a mentor . In addition, the willingness of the newcomer to integrate is also important. Proactive behaviour depends on the personality of the new employee, for example someone with an introverted personality will need more support than someone with an extroverted personality. The mutual expectations of both the workplace and the newcomers requirements are important so that no misunderstandings arise and for the socialization process to be successful. The expectations are formed in the psychological contract. For socialization to be successful, important information and clarification has to be provided in advance. The newcomer must be suitable for the position and for the particular workplace.

Leaders and team members are the most central reference persons for organizational newcomers. However, when entering an organization, time constraints and limited cognitive resources often force newcomers to make broad judgments of their new social environment at work, which can create lasting consequences. Thus, we apply two fundamental dimensions of social judgments – competence and warmth – to explore the interplay between newcomers’ perceptions of leaders’ traits, their experiences of social exclusion, and their organizational commitment. We test our hypotheses using data from 438 first-year students and their 32 team leaders who were randomly assigned to teams for an orientation day at a large university in Western Europe. We find that leader competence is positively associated with perceptions of competence-based exclusion, whereas leader warmth is negatively associated with both competence- and warmth-based exclusion. Moreover, warmth-based exclusion – but not competence-based exclusion – is negatively associated with newcomers’ organizational commitment.

This study aims to explore the role of leader and co-worker support in the relation between workplace training and newcomers’ work engagement. Taking into account that interpersonal interactions occur in a specific cultural context, we also examine whether there are cultural differences in how newcomers respond to the support provided by leaders or co-workers. We present a moderated mediation model, which we tested using data from surveys comprising 3,077 newcomers from 22 countries. We found that newcomers’ perception of whether their training needs have been fulfilled are positively associated with work engagement. In this relation, we also found an indirect effect via leader support which depends on power distance and an indirect effect via co-worker support which depends on individualism. Our results indicate that, globally, leader and co-worker support are complementary rather than substitutive resources for newcomers, although their effectiveness may vary in different cultural contexts.

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Mentoring is an important factor to increase the effects of organizational identification (OI) of an individual on its career attitudes. While empirical studies have previously focused on the effects of organizational commitment (OC) on career attitudes, this paper examined the ef-fects of OI on early career academics’ career attitudes. Furthermore, this paper analyzed the moderating effect of mentoring upon this relation. Based on the social identity theory (SIT) and the self-categorization theory (SCT), it was expected that OI is positively associated with career satisfaction and career commitment as well as negatively associated with career insecu-rity and career turnover intention. The four hypotheses are supported. Based on the organiza-tion support theory (OST), it was expected that mentoring (e.g. a mentor, mentoring quality, perceived mentor similarity) strengthens the effects of OI on career satisfaction, career com-mitment, career insecurity and career turnover intention. The 12 hypotheses are partially sup-ported. To test the hypotheses, data was used from early-staged academic workers from all 12 universities and colleges of Switzerland. The results indicate the importance of a societal view of the individual as well as the increasing importance of a self-responsible career plan-ning/design.

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We examine a counterintuitive effect of parental leave policies: supervisors and coworkers view potential new mothers as a greater inconvenience compared with potential new fathers, especially in organizations with greater maternal than paternal leave. We propose that this pregnancy suspicion manifests as subtle, disrespectful treatment (i.e., incivility), especially in the case of a first child, which leads to more career withdrawal when paired with a work-family support mixed message (i.e., conflicting signals and actions of organizational work-life support). In a time-lagged survey study, we examined 527 early career employees’ experiences of workplace incivility and work-family support at Time 1 and career withdrawal cognitions one year later at Time 2; we also collected objective data on organization’s maternal and paternal leave policies. As expected, women experience more incivility than men, but only childless employees, a difference that is greater in organizations offering more maternal leave than paternal leave. Although being a woman is not directly associated with career withdrawal, it is indirectly linked via incivility when paired with a mixed message of work-life support. Discussion focuses on the importance of examining individual- (e.g., gender and parenthood) and organizational-level (e.g., objective parental leave policies and perceptions of work-family support) work-family antecedents for understanding modern workplace mistreatment and its career effects in context, as well as informing the gender gap in professorships.

In many sectors, talents have become one of the most important resource and a successful talent management often is essential for creating a competitive advantage. But how does the commu-nication between the talent management and the talents, employees and supervisor work? Which communication topics require special attention? What are the objectives and the chal-lenges of the talent management communication? The present master thesis is addressing these issues and tries to figure out the current state of scientific research and practice in talent management communication, especially in communi-cation with the different stakeholders. Apart from the analysis of literature, interviews with experts from six companies are carried through to reflect the best practice in talent management communication. The results regarding the general communication show that talent management is in transition from mostly being opaque and seen as incidental to become transparent and purposely used. The results regarding the communication with the stakeholders show for ex-ample that individual responsibility and the expectation management are the most important subjects in the communication with the talents.

As downsizing and restructuring have become global phenomena, the impact of job insecurity on employee attitudes has received significant attention. However, research examining the role of cultural dimensions has been largely unexplored. Drawing on the conservation of resources theory, we investigated whether the relationships between both quantitative job insecurity (i.e. the perceived threat of job loss) and qualitative job insecurity (i.e. the perceived threat of losing valued job features) and employee attitudes (job satisfaction and turnover intention) differ in culturally distinct regions. This was examined using representative employee samples from two regions of Switzerland which differ in societal practices uncertainty avoidance and performance orientation: the German-speaking (n = 966) and the French-speaking (n = 307) regions. Our research indicates that whereas the relationship between quantitative job insecurity and turnover intention is stronger in the French-speaking region where there is higher societal practice uncertainty avoidance, the relationship between qualitative job insecurity and job satisfaction is stronger in the German-speaking region where there is higher societal practice performance orientation.

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II Abstract The term ‘sticky baton syndrome’ has only recently appeared in professional family business literature. Commonly described as the unwillingness to let go of the family business, the term has been used in multiple contexts and has yet not found its way into the academic world. This thesis provides a first definition for the syndrome and compares it to similar terms used in academic research. Three popular theories are applied to explain the antecedents of the sticky baton syndrome: principal agent theory, psychological ownership and the resource and knowledge based view of the firm. The resulting hypotheses are tested through a series of qualitative interviews with CEOs of family businesses in the Swiss chocolate and confectionery industry. The findings show that the sticky baton syndrome is an occurring phenomenon in family businesses, but also show that the often negative connotation which ensues from the term ‘syndrome’ is not fully accurate. As a solution for practitioners, I provide a model of four post-succession roles(monitor, ambassador, coach, consultant) helping successors and predecessors to determine their collaboration in the post-succession phase of family firms.