The Influence of Workplace Friendship for Female Employees’ Career Success in the Logistics Industry

Abstract

An increasing number of women are pursuing self-realization in the workplace because of the opening of society. With more fierce competition and gender pressure, the female’s career success will be affected by more complex factors. In this paper, we used structural equation model to test the relationship between the workplace friendship and career success by collecting data from 108 female employees in a logistics enterprise. The main findings are as follows. Workplace friendship had significant positive effects on career satisfaction, internal marketability, external marketability, which can be a basis for further research and management practice. Introduction With the improvement of the women's social status and ability, the focus of their lives are converting from family to career. More women want to complete the implementation of self-worth through professional development, but due to the dramatic changes of social competition and organization environment, women's career development are facing more severe challenges. Because of women's gender characteristics and limitations from general social values, which adds women more difficulties and obstacles in the pursuit of career success than men. For men and women are of different social expectations, women always confront difficulties when balancing their roles between family and work. Moreover, Women also undertake pressures caused by gender, such as discrimination, gender stereotypes [1]. Women are not afforded the same development opportunities as men are in the workplace, including training, challenging work assignments, and other forms of organizational support, in most cases women earn approximately 76 percent of their male counterparts’ salaries [2]. The glass ceiling is an obstacle that keeps women from rising to top positions in organizations. These issues are gender-sensitive issues that women encounter in the pursuit of career success,which makes that when we study influencing factors on career success, we should not be simply take men and women as a same category. Some researchers find out that women face career barriers and stressors at work that require considerable social capital to manage, it helps women to get access to inside information to leverage their social capital for career success [2].Nowadays the impact of social capital on individual career development is also growing. And compared to men, women tend to have more interpersonal demands, higher gregarious needs [3]. So from the perspective of social capital, we study the relationship between workplace friendship and career success, provide some specific suggestions for women's career development and management.