This article examines the role orientations of new managers working. in the Social Action field who are in an occupational transition phase. It extends and broadens the proactivity model developed in writings on organizational socialization. The latter is viewed as an interactive process which depends not only on the organization's initiatives but also on the capacities of subjects to "clarify," direct, develop their role and transform the norms of the organization (Morrison, 1993; Nicholson, 1984). Thus, socialization cannot be reduced to the mere result of pressure in the workplace. Our theoretical approach maintains that although role orientation is based on the subjects' relations with task requirements and the rules and norms of the organization, it is influenced by the aims and commitments related to the socialization environments and activities of these individuals outside work. The qualitative empirical study presented-here focuses on 15 new managers in the Social Action field (a social worker, special-education teachers, a socio-cultural group leader) who have, for 7 to 10 months, been performing managerial duties for the first time in their careers. These subjects underwent semi-structured interviews based on open-ended questions, a number of which dealt with role orientation. Operationally, the latter is characterized by the following indicators: value attached to duties, self-assignment of work objectives, operations related to activity completion or non completion, the aims,of the action, time management of work activities, and relations with others inside and outside the workplace. The corpus established through a complete retranscription of the in-depth semi-structured interviews was processed in two ways: through a computerized lexical discourse analysis, using ALCESTE software, and through a standard theme-based content analysis. The results highlight inter-individual variabilities in the way the managerial role is performed. The lexical analysis using ALCESTE brought out four role orientation categories: the role as positional construction (category 1) the role involving hyperactivity (category 2) the innovative role in serving the various Social Action population groups (category 3) the innovative role in the territories (category 4) The theme-based discourse analysis helped to identify three main aims in the work activity, relations with the task: in a particularly discriminating way, activities and aims can be distinguished relating to either the environment outside the organization or the subject him/herself, as an actor in the organization. - relations with others: these mainly involve relations between the managers and their superiors (experienced in the form of trust and cooperation or, on the contrary, in the form of dissatisfaction) and relations with the work team (from whom our subjects expect recognition or on whom they seek to exert their influence) relations with self and the time value of the action: these reveal contrasting positions regarding time management and the organization of work time and activities and non-work time and activities. The results obtained by correlating the. data: of both analyses show that in the occupational transition phase examined, the subjects engage in and perform their new managerial roles in the organization according to differentiated logics and orientations. The inter-individual variabilities observed in the implementation of these roles demonstrate that the latter are not simply driven by the rules and norms prescribed in the organization or solely by the subjects' developmental aims within it. They are subject to subjective interpretation and meaning. The orientation the subjects give to their role during their occupational transition is also subordinated to their commitments to socialization environments and time outside work.
