Socialization as a Political Arena: A Multi-Agent Interactionist Perspective to Understand Political Skill and Newcomer Socialization Rates

Integrating two social-interaction-based perspectives (i.e., vertical vs. horizontal social interactions) on political skill, the current research examined how organizational newcomers might leverage their political skill to promote their socialization rates through frequent interactions with different agents of socialization (i.e., supervisor vs. veteran colleagues). Using a four-wave longitudinal study with a sample of 1,197 organizational newcomers nested in 550 supervisors, we found that newcomer political skill had positive indirect effects on growth rates of adjustment outcomes via interaction frequency with veteran colleagues (but not with supervisor), while it had positive indirect effects on early-entry adjustment states via interaction frequency with supervisor (but not with veteran colleagues). Moreover, these effects were stronger when the level of prosocial climate for newcomers was high. Two supplemental studies, each using repeated-measures data from 200 organizational newcomers, provide stronger causal inference of the impact of newcomer political skill that is contingent on prosocial climate for newcomers, and rule out alternative explanations. Furthermore, we conducted supplemental interviews with 40 newcomers to provide an in-depth discussion on the differential roles of vertical (newcomer–supervisor) versus horizontal (newcomer–veteran colleagues) interactions in transmitting newcomer political skill into different adjustment dynamics (i.e., early-entry adjustment states vs. growth rates of adjustment).