Organizational Socialization and STEM Career Persistence

Despite efforts to increase the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) workforce overall, women remain underrepresented in these fields. Research has focused on increasing the number of women who enter the STEM “pipeline,” but the pipeline logic fails to explain substantial attrition of STEM-educated workers, especially women, during the two years after their college graduation. We examined whether organizational socialization during the transition into the workforce was associated with career persistence using structural equation modeling. Recent STEM graduates (N= 235) were recruited via university alumni associations to complete measures of workplace experiences. Our results show that fit-based socialization, that is, knowledge of the organization’s values and integration with the work team, predicted greater persistence, whereas task-based socialization (e.g., performance proficiency) did not. Further, the relationship between fit-based socialization and persistence was stronger for women, suggesting that interventions to bolster newcomers’ perceptions of fit during the socialization process may help to reduce attrition of recent STEM graduates and of women in particular. These results underscore the importance of environmental (vs. individual difference) factors that may affect persistence in STEM careers