Proactivity in Newcomers: The Importance of Building Relationships with Supervisors

Abstract

For newcomers, building relationships with supervisors has been linked to improved socialisation outcomes, including job satisfaction. A series of exercises was developed with the aim of increasing the amount of relationship building that newcomers engage in with their supervisors. Using a quasi-experimental, longitudinal design, with 46 newcomers in the experimental group and 38 newcomers in the control group, the efficacy of these exercises was tested. While the exercises were not effective at increasing the amount of relationship building between participants and their supervisors, a number of interesting results were found. Building relationships with supervisors was found to be the strongest predictor of job satisfaction of all the proactive behaviours measured. The link between job satisfaction and relationship building with supervisors was found to be mediated by interpersonal resources learning and role learning. Results indicate the importance of building relationships with supervisors and the difficulty in increasing this behaviour.