Do I Have to Ask for it? Emotional Support and Network Agency

Abstract

In this study, we combine a network agency explanation with a relational explanation of role expectations to understand the circumstances under which network agency matters for access to emotional support. The traditional structurally-based social network perspective overlooks, to some extent, the capacity of the entrepreneur to act on his or her own, offering as a consequence an incomplete explanation of human action and network agency. Therefore, interest in moving from structurally-based to agency-based explanations of how entrepreneurs access various resources, is emerging in the entrepreneurial network literature. We add to this literature by providing empirical evidence that network agency is more than an ability to effectively interact with others as previously assumed – it also involves a motivation element that translates into an individual’s sense of comfort for engaging, and hence with using their networks. Further, we show that networking ability and networking motivation do not function universally across role-relations but rather that their functions are modified by the culturally defined expectations associated with various role-relations. We use a mixed method approach that combines qualitative interview data with quantitative survey data to develop and test our hypotheses.