Intra‐organizational Network Resources: Relation to Career Success and Personality

Abstract

The study investigated the relationship of career instrumental and expressive intra‐organizational network resources with extrinsic and intrinsic career success and with the Big‐Five of personality in a sample of 264 white‐collar workers. Total network resources were associated with extrinsic and intrinsic career success above the contribution of human capital, demographics and mentoring received. And instrumental network resources contributed more strongly than expressive network resources to extrinsic career success. Furthermore, instrumental network resources emerged as important for intrinsic evaluations of hierarchical and interpersonal career success while expressive network resources emerged as important for intrinsic evaluations of job and interpersonal career success. There was limited support for the influence of personality on the accumulation of network resources. As hypothesized, conscientiousness was negatively associated with instrumental network resources; however, extra‐version, openness and agreeableness failed to make significant contributions to network resources over and above the contribution of human capital and demographics. The implications of the findings for individual career tactics and for organizational practices are discussed and the limitations of the study are considered along with directions for future research.

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“…Mesch (2012) also found that moderate levels of extra curricular food service experience during schooling appeared to be a benefit to graduates, who had greater industry persistence, which was linked to job satisfaction. Having networks of support, both at home and at work is another factor that is linked to subjective career success (Kuijpers et al, 2006;Bozionelos, 2008).…”

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“…Aryee and Chay (1994) found that having a mentor resulted in more job involvement, more organizational commitment, and increased job satisfaction. Joiner, Baartram, and Garreffa (2004) and Bozionelos (2008) also found that having a mentor increases perceived career success. However, even having a network of support, be that informal friendships (Bozionelos, 2008;Iverson & Deery, 1997) or the support of a spouse (Judge et al, 1995) or the wider family (Wang et al, 2011) at home, increases the career success of an individual.…”

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“…It argues that the presence of both task and informal interdependence within a team can have negative effects (Flache, 2002;2003). The reason for this is that the different types of interdependence may require conflicting types of behaviour from team members.…”

“…This leads to the situation in which formally interdependent employees are also informally interdependent. Flache (2002;2003) identifies two opposing mechanisms that have been studied in this respect: the social control mechanism and the social dependence mechanism. These mechanisms lead to contrasting hypotheses about the mutual effect of task and informal interdependence on solidarity toward co-workers.…”

“…Task interdependence concerns the job descriptions of employees and is dependent upon the person's formal position in the organisation (Podolny and Baron, 1997). Besides the tasks they have to perform according to their formal contract, employees are involved in activities that are not necessarily work-related, for instance to attain social resources, such as social and emotional support (Fombrun, 1982;Bozionelos, 2003). The relationships that are related to this type of interdependence are informal and characterized by person-toperson contact and are therefore referred to as informal interdependence (Podolny and Baron, 1997).…”