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Author ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6128-7565

Date Available

7-30-2026

Year of Publication

2026

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

College

Communication and Information

Department/School/Program

Communication

Faculty

Jennifer Scarduzio

Faculty

Renee Kaufman

Abstract

This dissertation examines how African immigrant employees make sense of organizational socialization in U.S. workplaces. As global mobility reshapes the labor force, nearly one in five U.S. workers is foreign-born, making organizational socialization an increasingly complex communicative process. Classic socialization models assume linear, uniform adjustment, yet international employees often face ambiguity, cultural mismatch, and racialized expectations that complicate early workplace experiences. Guided by sensemaking theory, this study conceptualizes socialization as an ongoing, nonlinear process through which newcomers notice cues, construct interpretations, act on provisional understandings, and revise meanings as contexts shift. Using a qualitative, interpretive design, I conducted semi-structured interviews with 27 African immigrant employees across different organizational sectors and analyzed data using phronetic iterative analysis. Participants describe how they managed organizational entry through anticipatory frames shaped by migration motive, peer networks, and deliberate pre-entry silence about what lay ahead. Across organizational life, participants experienced belonging as conditional, performed inclusion, actively maintained cultural identities under sustained assimilation pressure. When the organizational version of membership did not hold, participants redefined membership on their own terms through self-created belonging, strategic focus on professional output, significance-oriented migration frames, and, in some cases, explicit refusal of organizational socialization as a goal. The study also documents types of organizational silence and silencing shaped by immigration issues, racialized reception conditions, and political discourse. Theoretically, this dissertation advances organizational socialization scholarship by demonstrating that the stable organizational stances participants arrive at are the product of sustained organizational learning. They are not, however, the integration and settledness that the classical model describes. This study offers a theoretically grounded account of what organizational metamorphosis actually produces for a culturally distinct and structurally precarious population and calls for organizational socialization theory to account for the conditions that shape not only how newcomers enter organizations but also whether organizations are built to receive them.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.13023/etd.2026.375

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Funding Information

This study was supported by the Dissertation Research Support Program of the Graduate Program in Communication in the College of Communication and Information at the University of Kentucky in 2026.

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