Effects of networking on career success: a longitudinal study

Abstract

Previous research has reported effects of networking, defined as building, maintaining, and using relationships, on career success. However, empirical studies have relied exclusively on concurrent or retrospective designs that rest upon strong assumptions about the causal direction of this relation and depict a static snapshot of the relation at a given point in time. This study provides a dynamic perspective on the effects of networking on career success and reports results of a longitudinal study. Networking was assessed with 6 subscales that resulted from combining measures of the facets of (a) internal versus external networking and (b) building versus maintaining versus using contacts. Objective (salary) and subjective (career satisfaction) measures of career success were obtained for 3 consecutive years. Multilevel analyses showed that networking is related to concurrent salary and that it is related to the growth rate of salary over time. Networking is also related to concurrent career satisfaction. As satisfaction remained stable over time, no effects of networking on the growth of career satisfaction were found. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved).