engleski

It’s Lonely at the Top for Men: A Gendered Perspective on Trust and Value Homophily in Professional Egocentric Social Networks of Top Managers

We contribute to the debate on gender differences regarding utilization of professional social network resources. To test our hypotheses, we examined how trust in social network members’ professional competence, affective trust, and sharing values, beliefs and attitudes with network members relate to career success for female and male managers. The study results show that thriving women have more confidence in the competence of their network members, more relationships based on affect and social support, and they share more of the same values and attitudes with their professional network members than top men do. For men, the opposite is true ; the higher up in the organization hierarchy, there is less trust in competence of their network members, less affective trust and less sharing of the same values and attitudes. We conducted the study on a stratified sample of managers from large companies and we notice the observed gender differences only with managers in privately owned companies. In explaining differences between male and female social networks, we step away from the structural argument, and suggest that thriving female and male managers interpret their professional social worlds in a distinctly different manner. We argue that the underlying reasons for such different perceptions between genders are in different social expectations placed upon women and men in professional arenas.

social network analysis; gender differences; management styles; promotion

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