Managing the Process: The Intradepartmental Networks of Early-Career Academics

This article relies on data from surveys and interviews to explore the networking behaviors and strategies of early-career faculty members within the contexts of their academic departments. Findings suggest that faculty members' approaches to interactions and relationships with colleagues may be conceptualized according to a continuum of behavior, based on their political awareness of interactions and their strategic engagement in them, interactions as a means of impression management, the cultivation of relationships for symbolic inclusion in networks, and the presence of functional patterns in network. The article concludes with recommendations for future research.