When in Rome, Feel as the Romans Feel: An Emotional Model of Organizational Socialization

Abstract

Organizational socialization literature has long emphasized learning organizational culture upon entry. However, most previous socialization studies have largely focused on learning job skills, such as role clarity and task mastery. Focusing on emotional culture, the author provides a review about the roles of emotions in an organizational socialization context. Further, drawing upon the organizational socialization and emotion literature, the author builds a theoretical model, an emotional model of organizational socialization highlighting how newcomers adjust to the emotional culture within an organization, which ultimately leads to successful organizational socialization. This article provides new conceptual insights into the roles of newcomers’ adjustment to an emotional culture in a socialization context, providing fruitful ways for future empirical testing.