“Does signaling high commitment to nonwork roles penalize newcomers at work?”

The exploration of newcomers’ work-nonwork preferences gains significance against the backdrop of recent shifts in individuals’ life orientations. With a growing number of people aspiring to balance a successful career while maintaining active engagement in nonwork roles, understanding the implications of such endeavors becomes crucial for theory and managerial practice. This manuscript addresses this inquiry through two studies, utilizing vignette-based scenarios, involving managers evaluating hypothetical new team members of their teams who signal high commitment in both work and nonwork roles. In Study 1, the findings reveal that participants perceived newcomers expressing high commitment to nonwork roles as more capable of socially integrating in the new team. This relationship was mediated by perceived warmth. In Study 2, we extend our investigation to the organizational context, discovering that participants in family-supportive organizations evaluated newcomers signaling high commitment in both work and nonwork roles more positively, perceiving them as warmer. This contrasted with participants in family-unsupportive organizations. Both studies contribute to outlining potential individual and organizational factors that can accelerate newcomers’ social integration at work.