Beyond the Clock: Investigating Work Connectivity Behavior After-Hours and Its Influence on Newcomers’ Organizational Socialization

1. Introduction

As the digital trend strengthens, the popularity of social media has also grown. Corporate social media is rapidly changing how employees work and collaborate within the organization, with remote work becoming a part of everyday work. This typical work connectivity behavior after-hours (WCBA) refers to the behavior that employees still keep working state after work (Richardson & Benbunan-Fich, 2011). There is no consensus on the impact of WCBA (Yang et al., 2023). Many studies have focused on the negative impact or double-edged sword effect of WCBA. Regrettably, few studies in the Chinese context have examined the potential positive effects of the WCBA on newcomers’ organizational socialization, its internal mechanisms, and boundary conditions.

Newcomers have been recognized as the new driving force of an organization, and their socialization attracts researchers and practitioners, a prevalent subject of academic research (Jiang et al., 2022; Saks & Gruman, 2021). Organizational socialization refers to the process of how newcomers adjust their attitudes and behaviors to fit the organization’s values, goals, and behavioral norms. Understanding newcomers’ socialization process after they join the organization is of great significance. However, for newcomers who enter the organization, the new working environment is full of pressure, which will affect the newcomers to match with the organization, adapt to the new environment and complete the organizational socialization. With the development of information technology, convenient communication devices have integrated work scenes and social factors, breaking the time-space barrier in organizations and promoting the establishment of employee relationship networks. These advancements allow new employees to acquire social resources and offer more paths for newcomers to achieve organizational socialization. For example, employees are now able to accomplish their tasks anywhere and anytime without spatial and temporal constraints by using information and communication technology. The distinction between an employee’s home and workplace has become increasingly blurred as individuals can continue working after leaving the office. Technology has changed how, where and when employees work, allowing newcomers to handle work-related matters outside of regular working hours and increasing WCBA. This behavior serves as an individual complement to extra work, enhancing professional autonomy and flexibility. For employees, using mobile devices to work after hours increases their capacity, expands their work resources, and provides good experiences (Ohly & Latour, 2014). Especially for newcomers, this extended after-hours work behavior gives them more opportunity to adapt to the position and thus adjust themselves better and faster to the new environment.

Newcomers may not fully understand the organizational culture and goals when they enter the organization, and they may only have a superficial grasp of the business skills required for the job role. On the contrary, telecommunication technologies allow newcomers to fit into the new organization and adapt to the new environment (Yang et al., 2022). According to the JD-R model, job resources can effectively support individuals in attaining their professional objectives and have a positive effect on work engagement and well-being. Using mobile devices, WCBA assists newcomers in staying connected with their companies outside working hours, enhancing communication and interaction with colleagues and customers. At the same time, WCBA provides newcomers with access to additional organizational support to address job demands, helping them cope with the challenges and costs of job requirements and increasing job satisfaction (Reinke & Ohly, 2021). This will help to enhance the role identity of newcomers and organizational identity, thus assisting newcomers in constructing an explicit self-concept in the new environment and realizing socialization.

However, previous research has focused on the negative effects of WCBA, especially on non-work domain, such as marital burnout, reducing life satisfaction, and causing work-family conflict. On the contrary, in the context of China, the “996” working regime is ubiquitous in modern enterprises. It is common to work overtime at the company or continue to work after returning home. The continued use of cellphones to handle work during non-working hours, especially at home, represents an intrusion into family resources, thus making employees spend more time and energy on their work, and allowing more resources to flow into the work domain (Ragsdale & Hoover, 2016). Therefore, it is necessary to discuss the positive impact of WCBA in the work domain. Second, WCBA is becoming more common in organizations, and there is still insufficient research in this area. Therefore, there is a need for more literature investigating the impact of WCBA on employees’ role requirements in specific contexts (Ren et al., 2022; Yuan & Tang, 2018). However, there is still a lack of research on the impact of WCBA on employees’ organizational socialization. Third, although there are studies investigating the negative effects of continued use of communication technologies on employees after work (Yang et al., 2022), few research has focused the perspective on new employees at present. However, we believe newcomers are more likely to take the initiative to accept WCBA and use that behaviour effectively to achieve better socialization. Taking other specific situations as the scope of the study is conducive to a comprehensive understanding of the particular role of WCBA in different situations to provide practical suggestions for effectively dealing with the impact of WCBA. In conclusion, this study aims to investigate whether WCBA will benefit newcomers’ work and explain the underlying mechanism. The concept model of this study is presented in Figure 1.

Figure 1.The concept model.

2. Theory and hypotheses

2.1. Job demand-resource model

The JD-R model assumes that all job characteristics can be modelled into demands and resources in the workplace (Bakker et al., 2014). Job demands and resources lead to job burnout and engagement. Excessive or high job demands can negatively impact employees’ physical and mental well-being, deplete their resources, cause role conflicts and increase turnover intentions. Conversely, job resources have a motivating effect, buffering the negative impact of job demands, promoting employee growth, enhancing job performance, and increasing work engagement (Ong & Johnson, 2023). WCBA gives newcomers a fresh work experience, improves their control over their jobs, makes it easier for resources to flow into the work domain, and speeds up their integration into the organization. Therefore, this study explores the impact mechanism of WCBA on newcomers’ organizational socialization based on the JD-R model.

2.2. Work connectivity behavior after-hours and organizational socialization

Mobile devices have blurred the seamless move between non-work and work domains, with WCBA enabling employees to switch frequently between life and work roles. Meanwhile, WCBA, as a flexible working arrangement for employees, helps them to stay on top of their work, which can increase the flexibility of newcomers’ work and break down the boundaries of their work, thus enhancing their work autonomy. Due to WCBA, newcomers may have a better understanding of the role requirements the organization has for them (Mazmanian, 2013) and gain access to more resources, thereby reducing the uncertainties associated with their initial entry into the organization and increasing their understanding of the organization.

According to the JD-R model, adequate resources can promote intrinsic motivation, keep employees motivated, and help individuals grow and learn. Regarding newcomers, they may have challenges while attempting to engage in meaningful interactions with their colleagues inside the profession. However, mobile devices have facilitated employee connectivity and provided them with more social and emotional support. WCBA helps employees overcome temporal and spatial constraints, promotes the flow of resources among diverse fields, enhances the flexibility of resource acquisition and internal work autonomy of new employees at the initial stage of entering the organization (Fujimoto et al., 2016). This facilitates newcomers to complete work tasks and enhance role identity. On the other hand, it also improves employee communication and interaction. Thus, this behavior can help newcomers obtain work-related resources such as information and enhance organizational identity (Zhang et al., 2020). This enables newcomers to understand organizational-related information and learn relevant knowledge and skills more quickly, thus accelerating their organizational socialization process. Hence, we propose the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 1. WCBA positively affects newcomers’ organizational socialization.

2.3. The mediating effect of intrinsic motivation

Intrinsic motivation is linked to various positive outcomes, such as high-performance levels, creative behavior, job persistence, job satisfaction, and psychological well-being. Maintaining and enhancing intrinsic motivation requires supportive conditions. WCBA, as a flexible work behavior, enables employees to allocate their work time rationally and gives them more autonomy in their work (Sripirabaa & Maheswari, 2015). Therefore, WCBA can reduce stress in balancing the demands of work-nonwork domains, which motivates the individual to move forward. Moreover, this work connectivity behavior helps to enhance employees’ sense of control and enhance their perception of their self-worth (Sun et al., 2024). Thus, this autonomous work arrangement can stimulate employees’ intrinsic motivation. Based on the above discussion, we propose the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 2. WCBA positively affects intrinsic motivation.

Intrinsic motivation has a substantial and positive relationship with various work attitudes and behaviors among employees. When intrinsic motivation increases to a higher level, employees tend to make more efforts at work and further promote organizational citizenship behavior (Hai & Park, 2021). For newcomers, higher-level intrinsic motivation prompts them to engage in more information-seeking behaviors, which helps them achieve role clarity, task mastery, and social integration (Saks et al., 2011). This enhances newcomers’ organizational identity and role identity, thus showing higher organizational commitment and task performance (Chen & Liu, 2019), and promotes organizational socialization. As such, we propose the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 3. Intrinsic motivation positively affects newcomers’ organizational socialization.

WCBA enables newcomers to deal with the relationship between work and life more flexibly (Cheng et al., 2023) and aids newcomers in obtaining more resources as their subjective initiative increases. According to the JD-R model, the support of job resources can subsequently stimulate newcomers’ intrinsic motivation, which encourages them to increase work commitment. At the same time, WCBA can promote interpersonal interactions within the organization to satisfy their relational needs. Furthermore, the satisfaction of competence, autonomy, and relational needs can trigger positive emotions and stimulate intrinsic motivation (Cheng et al., 2023). On the other hand, the JD-R model believes that high job requirements will make individuals emotionally vulnerable. To alleviate the emotional loss caused by workplace events, individuals tend to be more motivated to innovate and change to ensure the consistency of cognition and behavior (Li et al., 2022). WCBA makes employees still unable to get away from their work after work. In the case of being unable to change the work situation, it can strengthen individuals’ intrinsic motivation to actively adapt to this work mode to complete the job requirements better. Organizational socialization represents the process by which new employees reshape their organizational roles and become members of various groups when they enter an organization. Communication with organizational insiders and customers or handling work tasks through mobile devices outside of working hours can help newcomers integrate into the organization more quickly and improve their work performance. While access to organizational resources helps satisfy their perceived competence, newcomers with high intrinsic motivation demonstrate higher levels of empathy and pro-social behaviors, resulting in more organizational citizenship behaviors and promoting organizational socialization. Therefore, we propose the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 4. Intrinsic motivation mediates the relationship between WCBA and newcomers’ organizational socialization.

2.4. The moderating effect of emotional labor

The concept of “emotional labor” was initially used by Hochschild (1979), who also noted that it is a type of labor that is separate from mental and physical labor and is frequently utilized in daily life. Deep acting is strongly associated with expressing positive emotions and surface acting with hiding negative emotions (Kammeyer-Mueller et al., 2013).

According to Affective Event Theory (AET), the work environment affects individual emotions and behavior. Positive emotions are strongly linked to positive work attitudes, encouraging employees to actively complete tasks and concentrate on acquiring resources for their jobs. In contrast, negative emotions make employees more stressed out, more likely to quit their jobs, and less satisfied with their jobs (Zhang et al., 2020). When engaging in WCBA, newcomers who adopt surface acting will consume many psychological resources due to the blurring of the boundary between work and life, making it difficult for them to maintain positive emotions. Therefore, they need to frequently adjust the difference between inner feelings and external expressions and carry out fake or false performances (Park & Hur, 2023). As a result, this causes internal disharmony and leads to a decline in intrinsic motivation (Rui & Song, 2020). On the contrary, deep-acting behavior can alleviate newcomers’ negative emotions to a certain extent and even generate positive emotions and identify with their work from the inside when WCBA occurs, prompting them to focus on the work itself and maintain long-term enthusiasm for the work. Deep acting can make an individual’s emotional expression consistent with their inner experience and effectively stimulate and maintain higher internal motivation (Rui & Song, 2020). In summary, we propose the following hypotheses:

Hypothesis 5. Surface acting negatively moderates the positive relationship between WCBA and intrinsic motivation.

Hypothesis 6. Deep acting positively moderates the positive relationship between WCBA and intrinsic motivation.

The working environment for newcomers is entirely new to them and full of uncertainty. Maintaining a positive mood is especially important for newcomers (Chi & Wang, 2018). Therefore, employers must encourage them to take initiative and perform tasks with long-lasting intrinsic motivation from the heart. When participating in the WCBA, newcomers adopt surface acting and constantly display emotions that are appropriate to the demands of the job, which will consume a large number of psychological resources and energy (Yi & Chen, 2021) and reduce their intrinsic motivation, making new employees less likely to engage in information-seeking behaviors, reducing their role identity and organizational identity, and thereby weakening the degree of their organizational socialization. On the contrary, newcomers who engage in deep acting behaviors also maintain higher intrinsic motivation when taking WCBA, enhance their self-beliefs and sense of significance in adapting to the job and completing tasks, and facilitate their socialization process. In summary, we propose the following hypotheses:

Hypothesis 7. Surface acting negatively moderates the mediating role of intrinsic motivation between WCBA and newcomers’ organizational socialization.

Hypothesis 8. Deep acting positively moderates the mediating role of intrinsic motivation between WCBA and newcomers’ organizational socialization.

3. Methods

3.1. Samples and procedure

Based on the previous analysis, we believe that investigating the influence of WCBA on newcomers’ organizational socialization holds both practical and theoretical significance. In the process of sample collection, a pre-survey was conducted before the formal research to ensure the accuracy of survey data. Since the questionnaires were mainly translated from English, this was done to enhance the reliability of the study. The formal survey was conducted through online platforms. Second, our research objects are mainly new employees from the service, education, and finance industries who have been working for less than one year. Because in these industries, it is more common to use mobile devices to do work at any time. Meantime, new employees are more likely to accept the organization’s disguised overtime behavior than old employees. Finally, before handing out the questionnaire, we made it clear to participants that the questionnaire was for academic purposes only and committed to protecting any information on the participants’ data. Ultimately, we have recovered 330 questionnaires. After excluding the invalid questionnaires with too short response time and too high a frequency of continuous occurrence of the same answer, 296 valid questionnaires remained, with an effective questionnaire recovery rate of 89.7%. Demographic information is shown in Table 1.

3.2. Measures

We assessed each variable based on modifications of well-established scales, all self-assessed by the employees and measured using a five-point Likert scale.

3.2.1 Work connectivity behavior after-hours. This variable was measured by seven items from Richardson and Thompson (2012), including frequency of occurrence and duration dimensions. The frequency of occurrence dimension includes three items, with item answers ranging from 1 (never) to 5 (very often). The duration dimension had four components, where “1” represented a period of 0-15 minutes, “2” represented a period of 16-30 minutes, “3” represented a period of 31-60 minutes, “4” represented 1-2 hours, and “5” represented a period beyond 2 hours. The value of Cronbach’s alpha is 0.807.

3.2.2 Intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation was adapted from the job preference scale developed by Amabile et al. (1994), in which the intrinsic motivation subscale consists of six items such as “I want my job to increase my knowledge and skills” (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree). The value of Cronbach’s alpha is 0.891.

3.2.3 Emotional labor. We measured emotional labor from Grandey’s (2003) two-dimensional. Based on the findings in this study, specific topics are appropriately altered. Questions 1-3 refer to surface acting, such as “I pretend to be in a good mood at work, even if I am not”, and Cronbach’s alpha is 0.707; questions 4-7 refer to deep acting, such as “I try to overcome my negative emotions at work and work in a good mood from the bottom of my heart,” (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree) and the Cronbach’s alpha value is 0.714.

3.2.4 Newcomers’ organizational socialization. This variable was adapted from Yan’s (2018) findings and adopted his scale designed for the Chinese context, which was modified to meet the needs of this study and retained a total of 14 question items, such as “I am clear about the job content and responsibilities I have to undertake at work” (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree). The value of Cronbach’s alpha is 0.916.

4. Results

4.1. Confirmatory factor analysis and common method bias

This study utilized AMOS 26.0 software to conduct a factor analysis that was previously verified. This analysis aimed to evaluate the discriminant validity of the variables, and the results are shown in Table 2. They demonstrated that compared with other models, the indicators of the five-factor model were the superior fit ($\chi^{2}/df = 1.984$, $CFI = 0.902$, $RMSEA = 0.058$, $SRMR = 0.0615$), and the discriminant validity among variables meets the standard, which supports the hypothesis test and provides support for the use of the five-factor model in the subsequent argumentation of the following study.

To guarantee the reliability and validity of the findings, this study employed Harman’s one-factor test to examine the common method bias of the questionnaire questions, which were self-assessed by the newcomers. The findings revealed that the initial common factor explained 34.70% of the overall loadings in the absence of rotation, falling below the critical threshold of 40%. This suggests that the common method bias in this study is rather minor and warrants additional investigation.

4.2. Descriptive statistics and correlation analysis

Table 3 displays the standard deviations, correlation coefficients, and means of the variables. Among them, WCBA is significantly and positively related to newcomers’ organizational socialization ($\beta = 0.491$, $p < 0.01$), WCBA is positively and significantly ($p$ < 0.01) related to intrinsic motivation ($\beta$ = 0.596), as well as intrinsic motivation is significantly and positively related to newcomers’ organizational socialization ($\beta = 0.662$, $p < 0.01$). Hypotheses 1, 2, and 3 is preliminarily tested.

4.3. Hypothesis testing

We used SPSS 26.0 to assess the mediation model’s hierarchical regression and the bootstrap test method to test the mediation impact of intrinsic motivation. The particular findings are shown in Table 4.

According to model 2, WCBA has a high positive predictive impact ($\beta = 0.605$, $p < 0.001$) on intrinsic motivation, supporting hypothesis 2. The results of Model 4 indicate that WCBA has a statistically significant beneficial impact on newcomers’ organizational socialization. The beta coefficient for this relationship is 0.495, with a p-value of less than 0.001, providing support for hypothesis 1. Hypothesis 3 is supported by model 5 that intrinsic motivation positively affects newcomers’ organizational socialization ($\beta = 0.679$, $p < 0.001$). Combining models 4 and 6 results in a decrease in the coefficient of the influence of WCBA on newcomers’ organizational socialization from 0.495 ($p < 0.001$) to 0.132 ($p < 0.05$), indicating that the impact of WCBA on newcomers’ organizational socialization is weakened due to the mediating role of intrinsic motivation, and thus Hypothesis 4 is initially tested.

This study continues the test using the bootstrap test method, with the participant number set to 5000 times and the confidence interval set to 95%, and the results are shown in Table 5. When the indirect effect of intrinsic motivation is significant ($BootLLCI = 0.2523$, $BootULCI = 0.4017$) and the direct effect of WCBA on newcomers’ organizational socialization is significant ($BootLLCI = 0.029,$ $BootULCI = 0.2037$), intrinsic motivation plays a partially mediating role, and Hypothesis 4 is supported.

Based on the findings shown in Model 9 of Table 6, it can be observed that the interaction between WCBA and surface acting has a statistically significant and adverse impact on intrinsic motivation ($\beta = -0.100$, $p < 0.05$), indicating that surface acting plays a negative moderating role in the relationship between WCBA and intrinsic motivation. Figure 2 further validates the moderating effect of surface acting. According to Figure 2, the effect of WCBA on intrinsic motivation can be weakened to a greater extent when surface acting is higher than lower surface acting. Therefore, Hypothesis 5 is supported.

Figure 2.Moderating effects of surface acting on WCBA and intrinsic motivation.

Similarly, in Model 11, the interaction term between WCBA and deep acting has a notable and favorable impact on intrinsic motivation ($\beta = 0.112$, $p < 0.05$), and deep acting strengthens the positive correlation between WCBA and intrinsic motivation. Figure 3 shows that as the degree of deep-acting increases, the relationship between WCBA and intrinsic motivation becomes stronger compared to individuals with lower levels of deep-acting. Therefore, Hypothesis 6 is supported.

Figure 3.Moderating effects of deep acting on WCBA and intrinsic motivation.

This study used the bootstrap method to test the mediating effect when intrinsic motivation is moderated to further verify whether the moderated mediating effect is valid or not. The setting is the same as above, and the results are shown in Table 7. When intrinsic motivation is moderated by surface acting, Index = -0.0683, with a 95% confidence interval of [-0.1082, -0.0115], excluding 0. Therefore, surface acting negatively moderates intrinsic motivation in WCBA and newcomers’ organizational socialization, and hypothesis 7 is supported. When intrinsic motivation is moderated by deep acting, Index = 0.0886, with a 95% confidence interval of [0.0264, 0.01477], excluding 0. Therefore, deep acting strengthens the mediating role of intrinsic motivation between WCBA and newcomers’ organizational socialization, and the finding supports hypothesis 8.

5. Discussion and implications

5.1. Discussion

Drawing upon the JD-R model, this study investigates the correlation between WCBA and newcomers’ organizational socialization. The findings of our study indicate that the WCBA has a notable and favorable impact on newcomers’ organizational socialization. This is mainly because WCBA, as a flexible way of working, provides many work resources for newcomers, promotes a positive experience, and gives newcomers more opportunities to learn about the organization and complete job responsibilities. Thus, it can enhance newcomers’ organizational and role identities and promote organizational socialization. In doing so, we shed light on the debates regarding the positive or negative impact of WCBA on employee outcomes.

Second, according to the JD-R model, WCBA is not only a work resource but also a work requirement so newcomers can maintain a high degree of autonomy and flexibility. This encourages employees to continue to perform their job duties during off-hours and will naturally exert considerable effort, thus enhancing the intrinsic motivation of newcomers. Motivated by high intrinsic motivation, employees may adopt positive, self-driven behaviors. While connecting with work and work-related colleagues during non-working hours, newcomers will maintain a high level of engagement and improve the degree of socialization.

Besides, the unique nature of newcomers makes their emotional labor more prominent. When engaging in WCBA activities, they need to adjust the difference between their true feelings and behavior constantly. Maintaining positive emotions for newcomers who adopt surface acting is difficult. This will reduce their intrinsic motivation and further decrease the initiative of newcomers to explore and understand the organization through the behavior of keeping work after hours when they first join the organization, thus reducing the degree of organizational socialization. Conversely, newcomers who engage in deep acting can identify with their work from the bottom of their hearts and maintain their enthusiasm for it. Meanwhile, they can use the working resources brought by WCBA to adapt to the organization better and faster. Specifically, deep acting can positively regulate the relationship between WCBA and organizational socialization and strengthen the mediating role of intrinsic motivation.

5.2. Theoretical implications

This study makes several theoretical contributions. First, WCBA is a behavior prevalent in contemporary enterprises and the current research is insufficient. Most of the previous scholars explored the mechanism of this behavior from the perspective of a negative or double-edged sword. However, in fact, in China, overtime culture prevails, and it has become common for employees to keep in touch with their work after hours. Especially, newcomers are eager to integrate into the organization in various ways, so it is easier for them to accept WCBA. According to the JD-R model, we examine the positive impact of WCBA on the newcomers’ organizational socialization under the specific background of China’s industry, thus making up for the shortcomings of previous research on WCBA in the field of work and enriching the positive ways of WCBA.

Second, most of the previous research emphasized the influence of WCBA at the family level, while this study responded to the call of scholars Shi and Zheng (2021), taking newcomers’ organizational socialization as the outcome variable to explore the specific behavioral performance of employees at the work level. This is also an expansion of the research field of WCBA.

Third, researchers have produced more fruitful results from current research on newcomers’ organizational socialization, primarily from the perspectives of teams, colleagues, and leaders. Wang et al. (2021) believe that with the emergence of new office forms, such as telecommuting and temporary workers, it is necessary further to study organizational socialization methods suitable for these new situations. Based on this, we introduce WCBA as a new organizational situation into the study of newcomers’ organizational socialization, which will expand the thinking perspective on and enrich the antecedent variables of newcomers’ organizational socialization.

Finally, using affective events theory, this study has examined the moderating effects of two emotional labor techniques between WCBA and newcomers’ organizational socialization for the first time. When taking WCBA, newcomers who use surface acting struggle to maintain positive emotions, causing internal dissonance and impeding organizational socialization. On the contrary, newcomers who use deep acting can maintain their work enthusiasm, focus on the work itself, and promote organizational socialization. Through empirical study, this work validates the influence of emotional labor on job performance, which will further enhance the relevant research on emotional labor.

5.3. Practical implications

Managers should capitalize on the benefits of mobile Internet and create more adaptable and rational policies to use the positive effects of WCBA fully. Thus, it can improve the work autonomy, internal motivation and the growth of work resources of newcomers to meet their psychological needs. Managers must be fully aware that the WCBA is both a job resource and a job demand. As a job resource, managers should make full use of the off-work time of newcomers to gain more knowledge related to the organization and customers through continuous work and stimulate their initiative. This, in turn, will make newcomers understand the effectiveness of WCBA and increase their intrinsic motivation. Furthermore, as a job demand, managers should carefully gauge new employees’ participation level in WCBA to prevent internal psychological conflicts. They should encourage immersion in WCBA and convert this obligation into motivation effectively.

In addition, the impact of WCBA on employees using different emotional labor techniques varies due to the positive emotional response it triggers. To avoid potential negative consequences, managers should pay attention to the mental health of newcomers, reduce overtime work, increase training, help newcomers reduce superficial behaviors, and design a harmonious working environment to satisfy autonomy. Encourage new employees to participate in the work from the heart. When employees first join the organization, the unfamiliar working environment will aggravate their sense of tension. Supervisors need to meet the emotional needs of employees promptly. Managers should understand the emotional changes of newcomers from the heart so that they can feel the organization’s care, maintain a positive mood, and take deep action. When newcomers are involved in WCBA, they unexpectedly have to continue to perform their duties after work. Therefore, managers should take timely measures to take care of newcomers, monitor their emotional changes, help them replenish resources in time, minimize the damage caused by surface acting, and help them obtain recovery experience.

At the same time, as newcomers, it is essential to maintain an optimistic attitude, effectively manage time, and adapt to the changes brought by WCBA. First, newcomers should leverage the potential positive impact of WCBA to maximize work resources, gain valuable experience, deepen organizational understanding, and strengthen the perception of organizational support. By doing so, newcomers can use technology better, stay current and improve their capabilities. For example, when receiving a client’s message after hours, newcomers should treat it as an opportunity to enhance their performance or ability to work.

In addition, newcomers should focus on deep acting rather than surface acting to mitigate the loss of resources caused by emotional labor and minimize work stress. When entering the organizations, newcomers should identify with and integrate into the employer’s culture from the bottom of their hearts. Furthermore, in the face of excessive WCBA, newcomers should turn pressure into inspiration, seize the opportunities that WCBA may provide, encourage the realization of personal goals, and support the strengthening of spiritual values.

5.4. Limitations and future research directions

This study is characterized by several limitations that indicate possible areas for further research. Firstly, the cross-sectional design relied on self-reported data, which might introduce biases. Future studies could adopt longitudinal or diary methodologies to track newcomers’ WCBA experiences and their effects on organizational socialization over time. Incorporating physiological measures, such as stress biomarkers or heart rate variability, alongside self-reports, could further enrich the findings.

Secondly, while this paper emphasized the positive effects of WCBA on newcomers, previous studies have demonstrated its double-edged sword effects. Future research should delve deeper into the potential adverse effects of WCBA on organizational socialization, such as its impact on work-life conflict or emotional exhaustion, especially in industries outside China.

Moreover, this study focused exclusively on newcomers, but WCBA also affects colleagues, leaders, and teams. Future investigations could explore the team-level and cross-hierarchical impact of WCBA to understand its broader organizational implications.

Lastly, as this study was conducted in China, where over-culture is prevalent, cross-cultural studies could reveal how WCBA operates in different regulatory and cultural contexts. For instance, comparative studies between regions with contrasting work-life balance policies, such as the European Union versus East Asia, may offer more generalizable insights into WCBA’s dynamics.