Ricerc@Sapienza

A flourish literature examined the newcomer perspective when joining a new working context using a stress theory as the Conservation of Resources Theory (COR; Hobfol, 1989), but neglected the work group point of view. From the social psychology perspective, during socialization, the newcomer tries to adjust to the group, but also the oldtimers (i. e. the more "expert" members) have to adjust to the new member. Empirical findings demonstrated that acceptance can be related to newcomer's characteristics and group characteristics, but no studies were conducted considering personality characteristics of the oldtimers. The purpose of this project is to investigate the relationship between group acceptance of a new member and a personality characteristic as ego-resiliency of the oldtimers using the COR Theory. The research will be composed of three studies aimed at demonstrating that: (1) higher levels of ego-resiliency of oldtimers results in higher acceptance; (2) ego-resilient olditimers show higher acceptance levels even in relation with less desirable newcomers compered to ego-brittles; (3) ego-resilient oldtimers accept less desiderable newcomers even when performance is high (i. e. a group condition that usually leads to worst acceptance levels) compared to ego-brittles. The participants will be Italian workers and data will be collected through questionnaires and analyzed using correlations and moderation analysis. If the hypotheses will be confirmed, the project will contribute to expand the literature on group acceptance, ego-resiliency, and COR Theory, offering also new directions for organizations efforts aimed at sustaining socialization of new hires.