Social Capital And Career Success

With the development of globalization and knowledge economy since 1990's, the organizational environment has deeply changed. The emphasis is on inter-firm mobility, unpredictability, unstable and changeful organizational environment in the era of the boundaryless career. So, the social capital is a new means to achieve career goals and for organizational human resources management, which neglected before. At the individual level, based on the problems of the former researches, this study investigated the importance of social capital in understanding employees' career success in the cultural background of China.There were three steps in this study: Firstly, measurement scale for social capital was compiled. After integrating different theories of social capital with research on career success by literature review, the concept of social capital was redefined in Chinese context. Items for the measure were collected by interview and open questionnaire. After the work of discussion, items evaluation, trial measure and revision, 30 items were accepted eventually, one half of items for accessed social capital, the other for mobilized social capital. Secondly, preliminary measure was implemented. After deleting some items with different meanings, Exploratory Factor Analysis(EFA) of data from a sample of 218 employees from different organizations indicated a 3-dimension structure of accessed social capital: network size, network diversity, social resources, and a 3-dimension structure of mobilized social capital: relatives' career sponsorship, friends' career sponsorship, acquaintances' career sponsorship. Thirdly, formal measure was implemented. The formal questionnaire(34 items) was composed of the scales for accessed social capital(ll items), mobilized social capital(12 items), perceived internal marketability(3 items), perceived external marketability(3 items), perceived career satisfaction(5 items). Confirmatory Factor Analysis(CFA) of data from an other sample of 254 employees showed further support for the results of EFA. The results of research also showed all the scales had satisfactory reliability and validity. Correlate analysis, regression analysis and Structure equations modeling (SEM) were used to explore the relationship among different dimensions of social capital and career success. Finally, the effect on social capital and career success of demographic and organizational variables was investigated.