Why do people network? Professional networking motives and their implications for networking behaviors and career success

Abstract

Professional networking involves a series of goal-directed interpersonal interactions that build and maintain professional relationships and include the exchange of work and career-benefiting resources. Despite the utility of professional networking, many people eschew the activity, which has spurred interest in the question: “why do people network?” Drawing from psychological theories of personality and behavioral prediction, we offer a theoretical basis for Professional Networking Motives (PNMs) that accounts for prior explanations for why people network. We verify and elaborate upon our initial theoretical conceptualization of PNMs by drawing from a series of semi-structured interviews of industrial and organizational psychologists based in the United States to identify the domain-specific content of PNMs (Study 1). We further posit that “why” people network (i.e., their PNMs) has implications for “how” they network (i.e., networking behaviors) and their career success. In Study 2, we develop and validate a measure of PNMs based upon occupationally diverse samples based in the United States, and we use a time-separated research design to evaluate whether PNMs differentially predict networking behaviors and career success. We illustrate the value of understanding people's motives for professional networking, as certain PNMs are more important than others for promoting different types of networking behaviors and forms of career success. We conclude by discussing the theoretical and practical implications of our study and offer suggestions for future research to deepen the understanding of professional networking and PNMs.