Discussion
Previous studies on newcomer socialization have evidenced quite systematically that newcomers' affective commitment tends to decline over time. Indeed, our sample of Brazilian newcomers in a governmental organization (N = 194) shows that this rule holds for 62 per cent of the newcomers. Despite this prevalence of declining commitment, 33 per cent of the newcomers displayed growth even if the odds are clearly in favor of decline. Only 5 per cent of the trajectories remained stationary over time. The fact that we found different subpopulations of declining, growing, and stable trajectories corroborates the earlier finding by Solinger et al. (2013). In an attempt to account for this disparity in commitment dynamics, we investigated the possibility that growth and decline may be explained by a distinct set of work experiences and/or personal factors.
As for work experiences, person–job fit and job challenge explained growth and decline in commitment rather well. About the variable of promotion, interestingly, the highest average frequency of promoted individuals was noted in the stable (not in the increasing) commitment group. Receiving the (desired or expected) promotion did not seem to distinguish well between stable and growing commitment trajectories. Thus, not getting promoted seems to act as a straining factor that incurs declining commitment. Our data are suggestive of an effect where a negative factor such as role overload gains relevance when explaining declining commitment. In particular, those being overwhelmed by the requirements of the new role (high role overload) were more prominent among declining commitment trajectories. This is suggestive of a strong moderation effect where high or low levels of a predictor have differential effects on change in commitment.
Clearly, this one study is insufficient to place grand conclusions and warrants replication. Also, the particularly small size of the stable group (5 per cent) warrants caution in interpreting the supplementary analyses. Future attempts to replicate this observation may benefit from research on normalization, which is a phenomenon where the extraordinary is rendered as seemingly ordinary (Ashforth & Kreiner, 2002). The degree to which a work experience is perceived as highly positive or negative (versus neutral) will depend on the degree to which the individual is habituated and desensitized to that particular stimulus. Some of the findings may also be explained by the peculiarities of our research context. For instance, in our sample where newcomers still had to be assigned to a job, we expect that individuals would be especially disappointed after finding out that they are not working in the field that swayed them to join the organization in the first place. This explains our finding that low levels of person–job fit will make for declining commitment just as high levels of fit make for growing commitment. In our particular sample that consisted of high achievers who made it through a fierce selection procedure, normalization may provide a useful explanation. High need for achievement individuals may have become used to the idea of succeeding in life. If success is normalized in that way, not obtaining the desired promotion is not interpreted neutrally, but instead as an instance of negative feedback and personal failure. In other words, among individuals for whom success (such as getting promoted) is normal, factually reaching this level of success feels like an ordinary day on the job, while not reaching this level of success feels like a negative work experience.