Originally found at Harvard Business Review

In the context of career advancement, the notion that “It’s not what you know, but who you know” holds some truth. However, for many women, this concept presents unique challenges. Despite the potential career benefits of building high-status connections within an organization, research has long shown that women face greater obstacles in establishing such connections compared to men. Our research, published in the Academy of Management Journal, offers new insights into this persistent challenge, and we share some of those insights in this article.

We collected data on 42 global pharmaceutical corporations over a 25-year period, tracing the networks of thousands of men and women as they progressed in their careers.

While our empirical focus is on the largest global pharmaceutical corporations, our arguments and findings are likely to generalize broadly to most global knowledge-based organizations. We chose to focus on the largest global pharmaceutical corporations for three reasons. First, they are important players in the global knowledge economy. Second, women have equal or better academic qualifications in the disciplines most sought after by pharmaceutical companies, but often lack equal professional connections that are so badly needed to succeed in the fast-changing life science industry. Third, data quality in this context is high.

Examining which networking strategies worked best for men and which worked best for women revealed striking patterns that challenge conventional wisdom.

Continue reading the original article at Harvard Business Review.

Read the original research in Academy of Management Journal.

Read the Academy of Management Insights summary.

Learn more about the AOM Scholars and explore their work:

• Carla Rua-Gomez, SKEMA Business School
• Gianluca Carnabuci, ESMT Berlin
• Martin C. Goossen, Old Dominion University