Success of higher education organizations largely depends on attracting and retaining qualified faculty members. Attracting and retaining faculty members is closely related to socialization process of faculty members. New faculty members on the one hand struggle with accomplishing research and teaching tasks, and on the other hand they try to adapt to a new culture. More importantly new faculty members are treated as organizational members who fully possess cultural and technical knowledge to adapt to new organizational setting. However, in most cases new faculty members lack cultural and technical knowledge. More importantly new faculty members lack formal support, put further challenges on faculty members.

One of the basic challenges new faculty members face with is that new faculty members are expected to fulfill multiple tasks (teaching and research) simultaneously. During their doctoral studies, new faculty members in general build their researcher role. However, teaching role remains under developed. As a result, new faculty members fail to capture a balance between research and teaching. Boice (1991) confirmed that new faculty members experience such imbalance in their basic tasks and focus on their teaching task at the expense of research tasks. Murray (2000) stated that fulfilling multiple tasks simultaneously necessitates effective coaching. However, when individualized nature of academic profession is combined with the absence of formal socialization programs new faculty members do not get adequate senior coaching.  

It is argued that adaptation of faculty members is closely related to their productivity in teaching and research. In order to provide wide and effective support during their induction period, it is essential to study socialization process of new faculty members. Based on this discussion, this study aimed at investigating the socialization process and identify the predictors of this process.

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