Correspondence: Jen-te Yang, Department of Hotel Management, National Kaohsiung Hospitality College, PO Box 608, Kaohsiung City 800, Taiwan

¹is an associate professor of Hotel Management at National Kaohsiung Hospitality College, Taiwan ROC. He completed his doctoral studies in Management at Edith Cowan University, Western Australian in 2005. Before Jen-te moved to the academic career in 2002, he had extensive working experience in divisions of food and beverage, room and marketing and sales in four international five-star hotels in Australia and Taiwan. Currently, his research foci are blue ocean strategy, career planning and development, cooperative education, individual behaviour, group behaviour, knowledge sharing and creation, managerial psychology, personnel management, organisational socialisation, and organisational support.

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to explore the effects of social interaction, work group autonomy, information-seeking behaviour, work stress and role conflict on newcomer socialisation outcomes in terms of individual job competences. The research samples have been drawn from all levels of employees in the organisational hierarchy of 61 international tourist hotels in Taiwan. The questionnaires were distributed to 1380 voluntary participants who had worked in the current hotels for between 3 and 6 months. The study of the 428 respondents shows that the newcomers preferred to use observation and reading approaches to seek information. It also shows that socialisation outcomes – in terms of individual job competences – were predicted at a significant level negatively by role conflict and work stress, and positively by social interaction and the monitor approach of information-seeking behaviour. This study suggests that an organisation should develop social activities to strengthen interpersonal relationships and mutual understanding among employees in a workgroup, as this would enable them to feel more open to discuss job-related matters at work.