Managerial networking: a systematic literature review and research agenda

Abstract

Scholars and practitioners agree that networking is a necessity in managers’ daily work, particularly in the domain of public and nonprofit management, in which service provision through networks has become the rule rather than the exception. However, the plethora of studies published on this topic has resulted in a highly fragmented body of literature. Such fragmentation calls for a systematic review that consolidates extant insights. This review structures findings from 63 studies on managerial networking published in leading public and nonprofit management journals and thereby provides an overview of constructs and measures used in networking research, as well as an integrated framework of the antecedents and consequences of managerial networking. A proposed research agenda calls, among other things, for the use of more sophisticated networking measures, a focus on the psychological antecedents of networking, as well as examinations of the dark side of networking and replication studies.