Anthony Paik Associate Professor Departments of Sociology Department of Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies Public Policy Center What Does Science Tell Us About the Art of Networking

Two questions about the art of networking  What kinds of networks are associated with career success?  Does social capital promote career success?  What factors are associated with the accumulation of social capital?  Are women disadvantaged?

Network closure versus brokerage Closure as social capitalBrokerage as social capital Source: Burt (1998, p. 9)

Strong versus weak ties Facebook friends as tie strength Source: Easley and Kleinberg (2010) strong ties weak ties

Network homogeneity and heterogeneity Source: Reagans and Zuckerman (2001)

Gender, brokerage, and promotions among managers (Burt 1998) Sponsorship effect: women were promoted early tended to have sponsors who were also connectors to other key people Source: Burt (1998)

Mentors and hierarchical networks  Advice  Support  Access to information  Access to resources  Strategic exposure and visibility  Challenging opportunities

Review of the literature  Google scholar  Search terms (gender, “social capital,” careers)   Reviewed the first 150 articles  Objective measures of career success  Income/salaries  Promotions  productivity  Western societies  Excluded studies limited to nonprofessionals  Vote-counting procedures

Number of studies finding associations between network structures of social capital and career success

Number of studies finding associations between mentoring and career success

Creating social capital

Networking differences  Small empirical literature  van Emmerik (2006) study of faculty in the Netherlands  No gender differences in creating “soft social capital” (support networks)  Men create more “hard social capital” (resource networks)  Small (2006)  Organizational embeddedness is a key for creating social capital

Conclusions  Women are disadvantaged in forming key networks  Networks can be built through  Intentional networking  Organizational and professional embeddedness  Effective networks for career success  Mentors and protégés  Possibly through bridging ties  Analyses are correlational  Unclear how gender intersects with race/ethnicity