Newcomer socialization is an adaptation process through which newcomers (organizational outsiders) transition into incumbents (insiders) who become integrated into the organizational culture, marking the completion of socialization. However, the role of incumbents as socialization agents is often taken for granted. In this conceptual paper, we theorize how and why incumbents' envy and jealousy at work can influence the socialization process and shape newcomers' adaptation responses. Drawing on an integration of social dominance theory and threatened egotism theory, we propose a theory of threatened dominance as the overarching underpinning and introduce a combined typological process model to explicate the dyadic relationships between incumbents and newcomers during socialization. We conceptualize this as a causal sequence comprising three phases, each represented by typological ideal types. The first phase explores the effects of incumbents' perceptions of affective subevents on workplace envy and jealousy (emotional reactions). The second phase proposes socialization behaviors (behavioral reactions) in response to these emotional experiences. Finally, the third phase focuses on newcomers' adaptation responses and socialization outcomes.
