Informal networks and the modern professional managerial career: Four studies of interpersonal influence on career decisions and outcomes

How do memberships in informal networks in an organization influence the career choices and outcomes of the modern professional manager? Using three datasets, I follow various aspects of a professional manager's career to examine how memberships in networks impact career outcomes that influence organizational attachment decisions. While turnover is a well-documented topic in organizational studies (Rosenfeld, 1992; Fuller, 2008), less attention has focused on how the informal relationships employees participate in at work impact the career outcomes and work experiences that affect our decisions to stay or leave a firm. Although we know networks to be important in careers (Brass et al., 2004) and decisions to leave a firm significant for individuals (Ebaugh, 1988; Hirschman, 1970; Mowday, Porter & Steers, 1982), understanding the interplay between the two is something missing from organizational theory and management literature that could inform current theories related to organizational attachment.;I approach this by studying informal relationships across three empirical contexts. In the first, I propose a novel approach for a way informal relationships influence individual decisions about attachment in a firm. Using network data that I collected inside two different organizations, I investigate social networks around employees who cite interpersonal conflict at work as a way to disentangle how informal networks affect organizational attachment. Examining the networks around individuals gossiping about difficult co-workers, I uncover a perverse support structure, where negative gossipers activate cut-off network structures as a way to complain. Compared to the networks around non-negative gossipers, these tight, more separate clusters within the firms shift their focus from "healthy venting" as a way to sort through problems to "unhealthy complaining" aimed at vilifying other employees as well as aspects of the firm. The result is the emergence of a dysfunctional support structure, where employees voicing complaints as a way to figure out their own fit in a firm, make decisions to leave and in the process, taint new employees at a critical point of organizational attachment.;I then shift to managerial networks abroad. Using network data from managers involved in a product launch in the Asian region of a large American software company, I find evidence of brokerage networks positively influencing career performance outcomes, even when conditioning for traditional norms attributed to collective Asian culture. This finding extends recent research on the topic by considering the differing influences of organizational and national culture when considering network effects abroad. Also, by finding brokerage advantage not limited to a particular American or individualistic "type" of person, it also provides supplemental evidence in the debate about the limitations of social capital for career advancement in particular contexts - in this case national cultures that espouse more collective values (Podolny & Baron, 1997; Xiao & Tsui, 2007). Knowing such potential limitations of social capital is relevant when building arguments on the influence and value of network membership in organizational attachment decisions.;I conclude by investigating how the early professional manager's career unfolds, looking at the effects of both informal networks and gender on the subsequent career patterns that individuals follow. I find managers influenced by initial experiences of mobility and tenure that map onto the social capital of brokerage and closure respectively, where tenure in the first job greatly influences subsequent career pattern decisions, ultimately sorting individuals into "stayers" or "leavers". Interestingly, I also find that women time their mobility patterns differently than their male peers, displaying a higher propensity to exit within the first year at a job, but after three years exhibiting stronger organizational attachment and commitment than men. This finding informs sociological and economic literature on gender inequality and careers by providing evidence that other mechanisms such as networks may be responsible for decision-making that leads to salary inequality rather than an inherent difference in work commitment between the sexes (Becker, 1975; Budig & England, 2001; England, 1982; Reskin, 1993). Ultimately, by sorting individuals based on their actual career choices -- "movers" and "stayers" -- and integrating social capital theory of brokerage and closure, this analysis provides a more holistic picture of career patterns than simply considering all individuals to be in the same risk set for mobility and motivated purely based on human capital considerations.;Taken together, the three studies inform organizational and career literature by integrating network perspectives into the study of organizational attachment and turnover as well as speak to the downsides of closed networks in organizations, a mechanism we typically associate with retention, support and job satisfaction.