Socialization tactics and youth worker adjustment: the mediating roles of fit perceptions

The purpose of this paper is to identify how three types of socialization tactics – content, context and social tactics – influence fit perceptions, and then how three types of fit perceptions – person–organization (P–O) fit, person–job (P–J) fit and person–group (P–G) fit – mediate the relationship between socialization tactics and positive socialization outcomes: organizational commitment, job satisfaction and intent to quit.

Responses from participants – 207 Korean youth workers – were subjected to ordinary least squares path analyses with bootstrapping to test the hypotheses.

First, this study found that socialization tactics promote youth workers’ perceived fit with organization, job, and people. Then, the mediation model showed that content socialization tactics do not influence dependent variables (socialization outcomes) through mediators (fits), while context tactics influence through perceived P–O fit and P–G fit for organizational commitment only, and social tactics through perceived P–O, P–J and P–G fit for organizational commitment, job satisfaction and intent to quit.

The results of this study suggest that institutionalized social tactics can serve as a key socialization method for new employees. In addition, youth organizations need to implement jointly formal and collective training programs with follow-up social workplace learning (e.g. mentoring and study circle) to help newcomers share the values of the organization and integrate well into it.

This study contributes for understanding the socialization process of new employees working in educational and social work fields and role of fit perception between socialization tactics and their career successes.