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Invisible but Essential: The Role of Professional Networks in Promoting Faculty Agency in Career Advancement

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Abstract

The benefits of professional networks are largely invisible to the people embedded in them (O’Reilly 1991), yet professional networks may provide key benefits for faculty careers. The purpose of the study reported here was to explore the role of professional networks in faculty agency in career advancement, specifically focusing on the overall relationship between the social capital gained from networks and faculty agency in career advancement. Findings suggest that off-campus networks are particularly important for faculty agency but that the benefits of networks may take time to develop.

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Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge the helpful comments provided by the anonymous reviewers on earlier drafts of this manuscript. We further recognize this article is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. HRD-1008117.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Educational Administration, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 133 Teachers College Hall, Lincoln, NE, 68588-0360, USA

    Elizabeth Niehaus

  2. Department of Counseling, Higher Education, and Special Education, College of Education, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20742, USA

    KerryAnn O’Meara

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  1. Elizabeth Niehaus
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  2. KerryAnn O’Meara
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Correspondence to Elizabeth Niehaus.

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Niehaus, E., O’Meara, K. Invisible but Essential: The Role of Professional Networks in Promoting Faculty Agency in Career Advancement. Innov High Educ 40, 159–171 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10755-014-9302-7

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