Newcomer Identification: Trends, Antecedents and Consequences.

We argue that the perceived prestige of an organization influences organizational identification via perceptions of psychological contract breach over time. We examine changes in these variables during the first year of 1346 newcomers over critical points including entry, institutional socialization and first assignment and how the dynamic accounts of these variables predict employee turnover three years later. Our five-wave results suggest that newcomers experience curvilinear trends in prestige and identification over time which initially rise during institutionalized socialization, then fall immediately after this period and finally stabilize with final upswings to some extent as employees settle into their first assignment. The trend in psychological contract breach follows an opposite pattern. Employee qualifications and cross-cultural transitions moderate these change patterns, which subsequently predict speed of turnover. Further examination also reveals that leavers and stayers show different trends in prestige, contract breach, and identification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]