Developing Work Attachment in Newcomers: Implications for Adaptation and Creativity

Organization researchers have been interested in understanding how employees become psychologically attached to their work. This issue seems to be particularly important to newcomers who just enter a new work environment. Guided by paternalistic leadership theory, we propose a mediation model to explain how to promote newcomers’ adaptation and creativity through developing their feelings of attachment to work (i.e., psychological ownership, leader-member exchange). First, we propose that increases in leader paternalistic behaviors will promote increases in newcomers work attachment. Second, we propose that increases in work attachment will be related to increases in adaptation and creativity. Third, we propose that increases in work attachment will mediate the relationship between increases in paternalistic leadership and increases in adaptation and creativity. Survey data were collected from 146 newcomers in China at 3 time points cross 9 months. The results from random coefficient modelling and mediation analysis support our proposed dynamic mediation model.