Gender as a discriminating factor in employee networking and intention to develop employability through career strategies

Dominique Bencherqui (dominique.bencherqui@gmail.com), Anne Janand (anne.janand@free.fr) and Mohamed Kefi
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Dominique Bencherqui: ISTEC - Institut supérieur des Sciences, Techniques et Economie Commerciales - ISTEC, PRISM Sorbonne - Pôle de recherche interdisciplinaire en sciences du management - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
Anne Janand: LARGEPA - Laboratoire de recherche en sciences de gestion Panthéon-Assas - UP2 - Université Panthéon-Assas
Mohamed Kefi: ISTEC - Institut supérieur des Sciences, Techniques et Economie Commerciales - ISTEC

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Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to seek to shed light on how French workers, men and women, use their professional connections, in order to develop their employability and deploy their career strategies. This article uses a quantitative methodology to examine the effect of gender on employee networking, intentions to develop employability and career strategies within a sample of 410 French employees almost evenly divided between men and women. Our findings show that men prefer to develop their internal employability by forming and developing instrumentally-driven, intra-organizational networks. Women prefer to develop their external employability, notably by forming their own instrumentally-driven, inter-organizational networks, in an effort to adopt career strategies that can be best characterized as " boundaryless ". Allowing and fostering networking, without making any gender distinctions and moving toward " career communities, " would be a strategic move for firms. It would cater to employees' individual aspirations in terms of career strategies and, by developing workers' employability, would contribute to firms' capacity to remain agile in increasingly turbulent times.

Keywords: Gender; Networks; Employability; Career development; Career mobility; Mbilité de carrière; Genre; Réseaux; Employabilité; Développement de carrière (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gen
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-01856609v1
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Published in Management & sciences sociales, 2017, La diversité : regards croisés. Aujourd’hui et demain, 23, pp.120-135

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