Empowering or Burdening? The Short-Lived Benefits and Costs of Upward Networking at Work

Abstract

Research on social networking has primarily focused the long-term consequences of upward networking on actors (e.g., Higgins & Kram, 2001; Lankau & Scandura, 2002), and upward networking has been furthermore found to be uniformly beneficial for actors in the long term. However, we have limited knowledge of in what ways upward networking impacts actors in the short term or immediately. Drawing upon conservation of resources theory, we focus particularly on upward networking – the pursuit of social ties with leaders in support of task and professional goals, and have developed a dual- pathway model that simultaneously examines the immediate benefits and costs of upward networking for employees on a daily basis. In Study 1, we have developed and validated a reliable scale of upward networking using 6 separate samples. In Study 2, utilizing a time- lagged experience sampling methodology across 82 employees who completed twice-daily surveys for 10 consecutive workdays, we examined the immediate effect of daily upward networking on work engagement through a resource gain of perceived impact and a resource loss of ego depletion. we found that the strength of the relationships between daily upward networking and its positive and negative outcomes was moderated by employees’ trait of self-control. Specifically, employees higher in self-control experienced greater impact after engaging in upward networking while those lower in self- control experienced greater ego depletion. Overall, the current study suggests the complex two faces of upward networking, empowering and burdening, on employees’ immediate work outcomes.