Social ties, task-related communication and first job performance of young engineers

Abstract This study investigated the relationships among social ties, task-related communication, and first industrial job performance of a group of young engineers by utilizing a cooperative (coop) engineering program as a natural study. The coop arrangement allowed the researcher to examine the work behavior of these young engineers with similar academic training who were working on comparable work assignments in the same set of organizations. The study found that the job performance of the coop engineers was related to the pattern of work- related communication but not the total number of contacts. Specifically, high performance new engineers were integrated more broadly into the interpersonal communication networks than low performance new engineers. Moreover, high performance new engineers exhibited communication patterns similar to those of high performance veteran engineers working on similar types of technical work. Social ties with the company staff was found to be related positively with job performance, but social ties with other coop engineers was found to be related negatively with job performance, a result which challenges an implicit assumption often made by researchers and managers about the organizational socialization of newcomers. Overall, this study provides an integrative framework for relating social ties and communication as key factors for understanding the job performance of young engineers and presents a methodology for assessing their organizational assimilation.

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