Bank Teller Organizational Assimilation in a System of Contradictory Practices

Abstract

This article reports an ethnographic study of part-time teller assimilation in a large branch banking organization. Although strict adherence to formally established policy was emphasized by socialization agents at teller training school, the substance and application of these rules were contradicted by agents at the branch banks. These contradictions were never fully resolved, making assimilation difficult for the tellers as they struggled to understand what role requirements to follow and how to interpret their overall experience. The altered rules forced the tellers to rely on superiors to oversee many day-to-day decisions. The tellers responded to the contradictions with surprise and disappointment, and disparaged elements of their assimilation experience. The contradictory assimilation messages also interfered with newcomers' developing feelings of membership and willingness to remain in the organization's employ. The manuscript concludes by discussing ways by which management practitioners may ease newcomers' entry experiences in contradictory bureaucratic systems.

Workplace Friendship, Trust in the Leader and Turnover Intention: The Mediating Effects of Work Engagement

“…Teller applicants who are given specific and general previews of their work tend to leave during the first three weeks in their jobs, while those who do not get any preview leave their jobs later (Dean & Wanous, 1984). During orientation, tellers are instructed to adhere strictly to the bank's established policy, only to find the instructions being disregarded by colleagues at the branch (DiSanza, 1995). Centralized and formalized organizational structures are related to bank tellers' job stress (Chahardoli, Motamedzade, Hamidi, Soltanian, & Golmohammadi, 2015) and, although task redesign may quickly increase bank tellers' satisfaction and commitment, their ISSN 2162-3058 2019 satisfaction soon returns to the initial pre-redesign level (Ricky, 1991).…”

Severing Primary Ties: Exit From Totalistic Organizations

“…The majority of existing organizational assimilation research has focused on the process of becoming a member of, or assimilating into, corporate organizations (e.g., DiSanza, 1995;Gibson & Papa, 2000;Jones & Crandall, 1985;Morrison, 1995;Myers, 2005;Myers & Oetzel, 2003). While complete reviews of Jablin's (2001) phasic model of assimilation are available elsewhere (see Kramer, 2010), this study investigates the exit process by comparing narrative data from totalistic organizations.…”

“…Exit has been treated predominately as a failure to metamorphose (e.g., Carr, Pearson, Vest, & Boyar, 2006;DiSanza, 1995;Gibson & Papa, 2000;Jablin, 1982Jablin, , 1984Myers, 2005), or an ''inevitable conclusion'' (Kramer, 2010, p. 186) of the assimilation process. Jablin (2001) advanced the study of exit with the addition of a staged model of exit including preannouncement, announcement of exit, and postexit organizational sensemaking.…”

“…Like other organizational phenomena, exit literature focuses primarily on leaving paid employment, exploring employee turnover (e.g., Danielson, 2004;Golden, 2007;Halbesleben & Buckley, 2004;Maertz & Griffeth, 2004;McNatt & Judge, 2008;Peterson, 2004) and reasons for employee exit (DiSanza, 1995;Myers, 2005). This exit research often applies Jablin's (2001) phasic model of information seeking and sharing, which includes stages of preannouncement sharing with peers, announcement, and postexit sensemaking.…”

A Study of Voluntary Organizational Membership: The Assimilation Process in a Community Choir

“…Instead this transition is best understood as the psychological adjustment that occurs when uncertainty has been managed and individuals move from being preoccupied with their transition to maintaining their new situations (Schlossberg, 1981). Full Western Journal of Communication 55 membership for employees generally includes understanding the organization's culture (e.g., DiSanza, 1995), developing supervisor and peer relationships (e.g., Sias, 2009), and increasing satisfaction with the organization (Jablin, 1987). Because volunteers typically spend significantly less time in their organizations than full-time employees, their experiences as full members may be similar, but somewhat different, and so this study explored the next question:…”