Abstract
As employee mobility and first year turnover continue to grow, understanding how to successfully integrate newcomers into the company is more important than ever. Organizational socialization is the process through which organizational outsiders become effective members of the organization. The learning and assimilation required throughout this process are largely dependent on the relationships newcomers establish during this transition as well as how they access, mobilize, and use the resources these relationships provide. Using a systematic literature review, we deepen our understanding of social capital’s role in the process of organizational socialization. In doing so, we show how boundary conditions affect the role of social capital during newcomer adjustment, shed light on the dark sides of social capital during the process, and emphasize the necessity of viewing social capital as a dynamic construct.