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A model integrating competing theories of social capital with research on career success was developed and tested in a sample of 448 employees with various occupations and organizations. Social capital was conceptualized in terms of network structure and social resources. Results of structural equation modeling showed that network structure was related to social resources and that the effects of social resources on career success were fully mediated by three network benefits: access to information, access to resources, and career sponsorship.
Organizational researchers have begun to develop increasingly comprehensive models of career success using demographic, human capital, workfamily, motivational, organizational, and industry variables (e.g., Dreher & Ash, 1990; Judge & Bretz, 1994; Judge, Cable, Boudreau, & Bretz, 1995; Kirchmeyer, 1998). Although this work has provided considerable evidence regarding the determinants of career outcomes, the roles of informal interpersonal behaviors have not been fully explored (Judge & Bretz, 1994; Pfeffer, 1989). Popular advice for getting ahead in one's career rarely fails to mention the importance of networking for the achievement of career goals (e.g., Bolles, 1992; Kanter, 1977). Indeed, Luthans, Hodgetts, and Rosenkrantz (1988) found that the most successful managers in their study spent 70 percent more time engaged in networking activities and 10 percent more time engaged in routine communication activities than their less successful counterparts. Recent advances in social capital theory (Coleman, 1990) have begun to provide a finer-grained analysis of the ways individuals' social networks affect their careers in organizations (Burt, 1992, 1997; Ibarra, 1995; Podolny & Baron, 1997; Sparrowe & Popielarz, 1995). This theoretical perspective has the potential to considerably enhance scholars' knowledge of the role of social processes in career success.
The first purpose of the current study was to integrate the current conceptualizations of social capital as they pertain to career success. Three different theoretical approaches-weak tie theory (Granovetter, 1973), structural hole theory (Burt, 1992), and social resource theory (Lin, 1990)-- focus on different network properties as representations of social capital. However, in all these theories, the key explanatory variables for the effect of social capital on career mobility are greater access to information, resources, and sponsorship. To date, these explanatory variables have not been included in empirical tests. The main contribution of the current investigation to the social network...