Stayers versus movers: Social capital and early career imprinting among young professionals

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2210
• Published date: 01 January 2018
• Author: Stanislav D. Dobrev,Jennifer Merluzzi
• Date: 01 January 2018

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Stayers versus movers: Social capital and early career imprinting

among young professionals

Stanislav D. Dobrev

1

|Jennifer Merluzzi

2

1

Lubar School of Business, University of

Wisconsin‐Milwaukee, Milwaukee, Wisconsin,

U.S.A.

2

George Washington University School of

Business, Washington DC, U.S.A.

Correspondence

Stanislav D. Dobrev, Lubar School of Business,

University of Wisconsin‐Milwaukee,

Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S.A.

Email: dobrev@uwm.edu

Summary

We investigate what interfirm career mobility patterns would emerge if individuals are moti-

vated by the job rewards they obtain as a function of their experience in organizations. We artic-

ulate two career strategies that individuals employ to navigate their early careers—commitment

to a single employer and “job hopping”between different employers. Each strategy generates

social capital (an individual's structure of social relations) but of a different kind. Embeddedness

in the same organization over time develops a strong local identity and reputation within the

firm. Boundary spanning through experience in different organizations creates opportunities

for connecting people and ideas and for knowledge transfer between firms. We posit and pres-

ent evidence that the choice between these two strategies is conditioned by social experience at

the onset of one's career—the length of tenure with the first employer—which sorts individuals

into “stayers”and “movers.”

KEYWORDS

careers, imprinting, organizationtheory, social capital, sociology

1|INTRODUCTION

Social capital, a metaphor describing the resources that accrue to peo-

ple from their relations with others, has been at the core of research

relating the structure of an individual's social network to labor market

advantages including compensation (Burt, 2005), job satisfaction (Burt

& Ronchi, 2007), managerial performance (Moran, 2005), and job

search and hiring (Belliveau, 2005; Greenberg & Fernandez, 2016;

Sterling, 2015). Although much of this literature has highlighted the

positive returns of social capital to specific career outcomes, few have

sought to understand how the pursuit and accrual of social capital

shape career trajectories. If social capital yields job rewards, it should

affect individual career choices and strategies because labor market

experience is a venue not simply for realizing the benefits of social

capital but also for building it. Central to this investigation are the

individuals' career experiences within firms—organizations largely pro-

vide the basis for the emergence and persistence of work‐related

social capital.

Theories of social capital recognize two distinct mechanisms by

which the structure of social relations proves advantageous.

Embeddedness (also called cohesion) arises from an individual's deep

integration with others in a particular social group, which fosters trust

and cooperation and builds reputation as a function of cohesiveness

within the group (Coleman, 1988; Granovetter, 1985; Uzzi, 1996).

1

Boundary spanning (also called bridging or brokerage) occurs when indi-

viduals encompass multiple social groups and are able to benefit from

learning and resource transfer across boundaries (Allen, 1971; Burt,

2005; Friedman & Podolny, 1992; Thompson, 1967). At the level of

professional careers (a sequence of jobs typically held one at a time

and sequentially), boundary‐spanning opportunities arise when individ-

uals change jobs between organizations. Firm‐to‐firm job transitions

allow individuals to import knowledge, experience, and personal con-

nections to their new employer. By contrast, embeddedness in a single

organization suggests the formation of robust, enduring social relation-

ships that allow for trust and strong organizational identity to develop.

Addressing the question of whether accumulating social capital is

either rationally pursued for the purpose of maximizing job rewards

(Burt, 2005) or simply presents itself as a “natural byproduct”in the

course of one's career progression (Granovetter, 1986, p. 10), we argue

that it is both: The initial formation of social capital is shaped “natu-

rally”by the tenure duration of the first job, which produces a strong

1

Our conception of embeddedness follows the sociological research tradition,

which considers how social relations shape and constrain economic action. It

complements but is distinct from the vibrant stream of microlevel research that

examines the psychological processes implicated in job embeddedness (Mitchell,

Holtom, Lee, Sablynski & Erez, 2001).

Received: 3 March 2016 Revised: 19 April 2017 Accepted: 25 May 2017

DOI: 10.1002/job.2210

J Organ Behav. 2018;39:67–81. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/job 67