Generalizing Newcomers' Relational and Organizational Identifications: Processes and Prototypicality
通过两项实地研究，发现新员工对主管的关系认同会通过情感、认知和行为机制泛化为组织认同，且主管的原型性（即被视为推广组织核心价值观）会增强这一过程。
A recent theoretical proposal is that relational identification generalizes to organizational identification through affective, cognitive, and behavioral mediating mechanisms. The generalization process is strengthened when a relational other is prototypical—that is, is seen as promoting core organizational values. We investigate these propositions via two field studies. First, we find, via temporally lagged data from 186 newcomers to the telemarketing industry, that relational identification with a supervisor generalizes to organizational identification through affective (i.e., affect transfer), cognitive (i.e., social influence), and behavioral (i.e., behavioral “sensemaking”) mediating mechanisms. Second, we find, via temporally lagged data from 1,101 newcomers to the U.S. Army, that a newcomer's relational identification with his/her supervisor generalizes to the newcomer's organizational identification, but only when the supervisor is perceived to be prototypical. Our combined findings suggest that (1) multiple identifications are more integrative than exclusive and (2) organizational membership may be more personalized and relational than previously assumed in extant research.