The relationship of social capital with objective career success: the case of Tunisian bankers

Abstract

Purpose

Although much research has investigated the impact of social capital on objective career success, the process through which this relation is established remains under-explored. In addition, studies conducted in the Middle East and North Africa region are scarce. The purpose of this paper is to examine and potentially bridge these gaps.

Design/methodology/approach

Data were collected via survey from 348 Tunisian bankers. Path analysis using AMOS was used to explore the relationships between mentoring received, network resources training and development and objective career success. For testing the mediating hypotheses, the authors employed bootstrapping.

Findings

Results support the conjecture that social capital is useful for career success. The authors found that when the employees receive mentoring, they seem to develop more instrumental network resources, and consequently they have wider access to training and development, which, in turn, will be related to better promotion outcomes. However, expressive network resources were not related to objective career success, and training and development did not mediate the relationship between these network resources and career success.

Originality/value

To the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first studies to explore the relationship between social capital and objective career success in the Tunisian context. This paper also reveals the mediating role of training and development in the above relationship. These findings add to the cross-cultural literature on careers.

Citation

Gara Bach Ouerdian, E. and Mansour, N. (2019), "The relationship of social capital with objective career success: the case of Tunisian bankers", Journal of Management Development, Vol. 38 No. 2, pp. 74-86. https://doi.org/10.1108/JMD-09-2018-0257