Agency and imprinting in network dynamics: A look across the career life-cycle

Looking at the evolution of networking behaviours throughout the career life-cycle in a professional service firm (LegalCo) we find distinctive networking foci and activities that come with the tasks and roles of different career stages. Taking a closer look at networking behaviours within each career stage we identify and describe how the networking of high agency (HA) vs. low agency (LA) service professionals differs. We track the differentiation between HA and LA networkers across the career life-cycle from junior associate to partner and identify three overreaching mechanisms of networking agency – seeking out (specific organisational actors), creating imprinting ties and playing on similarities – that account for distinctively different networking paths throughout the career life -cycle. We discuss the career implications and the role of homophily as an underlying groundwork that acts as an enabler or a hurdle to the activation of the identified mechanisms of agency.

, 2014