Newcomers’ learning and co-worker undermining: moderated mediation analysis

Purpose – In the last decade, researchers have suggested relationships between negative mentoring (NM) and undesirable work interactions, termed co-worker undermining. Existing evidence has shown that both NM and group identity positively influence this set of negative co-worker behaviors. The purpose of this paper is to expand the domain by including two additional influences, such as newcomer’s learning (T1) as a mediator between NM (T1) and co-worker undermining (T2), and (low and high) group identity moderation (T1). Design/methodology/approach – The authors collected time-separated data, with a final sample of 303 employees of various Spanish organizations. Findings – As hypothesized, the results indicate that newcomer’s learning mediates the relationships between NM and co-worker undermining. The conditional effect of newcomer’s learning was strong and significant at lower levels of group identity, and it was weaker and non-significant when group identity was higher. Thus, the mediated moderation analyses performed support the study’s main hypothesis. Research limitations/implications – Because of the self-reported approach, the results can be affected by common method variance. But the design with time-separated data enables stronger confidence in the inferences drawn from the study than permitted by a cross-sectional study design. Practical implications – The paper includes implications for employee’s careers and for counseling practitioners. Social implications – This paper is relevant because it shows that group identification can protect newcomers from the consequences of negative events during the organizational entry phase. Additionally, practitioners could design more efficient intervention programs by taking novice employees’ affective experiences into account. Organizational and societal leaders may be well-served by knowledge about preventing both NM and co-worker undermining in order to protect newcomers from the destructive consequences linked to such relationships. Originality/value – This paper focusses on a dysfunctional personnel situation, as co-worker undermining, in order to clarify their links with organizational and group processes. The existing research has tended to address NM, organizational socialization, co-worker undermining and group identification as separate phenomena. In contrast, this study is intended as a first step toward integrating the results of these processes, which interact in a series of complex relations.