Implicit Motives as Determinants of Networking Behaviors

Abstract

In today’s world of work, networking behaviors are an important and viable strategy to enhance success in work and career domains. Concerning personality as an antecedent of networking behaviors, prior studies have exclusively relied on trait perspectives that focus on how people feel, think, and act. Adopting a motivational perspective on personality, we enlarge this focus and argue that beyond traits predominantly tapping social content, motives shed further light on instrumental aspects of networking – or why people network. We use McClelland’s implicit motives framework of need for power (nPow), need for achievement (nAch), and need for affiliation (nAff) to examine instrumental determinants of networking. Using a facet theoretical approach to networking behaviors, we predict differential relations of these three motives with facets of (1) internal vs. external networking and (2) building, maintaining, and using contacts. We conducted an online study, in which we temporally separate measures (N = 539 employed individuals) to examine our hypotheses. Using multivariate latent regression, we show that nAch is related to networking in general. In line with theoretical differences between networking facets, we find that nAff is positively related to building contacts, whereas nPow is positively related to using internal contacts. In sum, this study shows that networking is not only driven by social factors (i.e., nAff), but instead the achievement motive is the most important driver of networking behaviors.

Professional networking: Exploring differences between offline and online networking

“…Notice that these are all explicit motivations. Wolff et al (2018) in contrast, examined the influence of implicit motivations (i.e. need for power, need for achievement, and need for affiliation) on the six types of professional networking described above.…”

Developing and Validating a Short Networking Behavior Scale (SNBS) From Wolff and Moser’s (2006) Measure

“…We presumed that a reliable scale would be attainable with 3 items from each subscale (Hinkin, 1995), that is, 9 items assessing each, internal and external networking, respectively. Second, as an internal item quality criterion, we obtained raw data for the 44-item long version from the studies by Wolff and Kim (2012a, N = 371), Wolff and Kim (2012b, N = 355), and Wolff, Weikamp, and Batinic (2018, N = 707). 1 We use all three data sets to select items thus reducing the dependability of our selection on a single sample and its particularities.…”

Do All Employees Benefit From Daily Networking? The Moderating Effect of the Affiliation Motive

“…We used the Multi-Motive Grid (MMG; Sokolowski, Schmalt, Langens, & Puca, 2000) to assess the need for affiliation motive. The MMG is a validated, pictorial test (Langens & Schmalt, 2008) and has been used in the organizational context in the past (Kehr, 2004a;Sokolowski et al, 2000;Wolff et al, 2018). An example of a picture with a high arousal potential for affiliation only shows people dancing at a disco.…”