Who is in my network? A proposal for boundary definition in a personal network

While social networks have been shown to support careers and considerable empirical research has been undertaken in support of this, researchers looking into career-orientated networks, like all network studies, still have a boundary specification challenge. The author looks at the challenge of boundary definition for a network containing connections that can be utilised directly, i.e. without borrowing the social capital of others to utilise them. Career networks are shown to need all three of generation, maintenance and utilisation if they are to aid careers. The proposed refinement of network definitions to delineate the subset of connections able to be utilised directly creates a more productive way of identifying the true extent of a career-supporting network. The paper draws on the literature and proposes a new relational definition to aid researchers looking at egocentric networks that support careers.