Thesis Abstract The socialisation process represents an excellent opportunity for organisations to facilitate a workforce that is autonomous and motivated. Existing literature has focused largely on the development of newcomers' competence and social networks as significant outcomes of socialisation. However, research efforts have overlooked the importance of engaging with an important motivational resource-employees' sense of self-determination to facilitate successful adjustment. The current

more »

... hesis proposes a more extensive view of organisational socialisation by incorporating internalisation and newcomers' experience of autonomy as critical indicators of newcomer adjustment. The introductory chapters provide rationale for the dissertation research by identifying key gaps and limitations of the literature, before introducing self-determination theory (SDT) as a meaningful lens to advance the field. The first empirical study in Chapter 4 found newcomers' need satisfaction for competence, relatedness, and autonomy as key mechanisms that connect organisational socialisation tactics and supervisors' autonomy support to socialisation outcomes. The initial review also reveal important limitations associated with the leading framework and scale of socialisation tactics. Chapter 5 presents efforts to address these limitations and offers a refined framework of organisational socialisation tactics that incorporates SDT's assumptions on human motivation. A series of validation studies presented in Chapter 6 provides evidence for the reliability and validity of the new Socialisation Experience Scale. Overall, the current thesis argues for the importance of examining not only newcomers' sense of competence and relatedness, but also their autonomy, in advancing our understanding of organisational socialisation. In addition to a theoretical framework that is more relevant to the contemporary organisational landscape, the current iv research provides a reliable and valid instrument that will support future socialisation research and practice endeavours.