Network agency unlocks the world of advice: Entrepreneurs’ networking intensity and social skills

Abstract This study examines how entrepreneurs’ network agency enables the generation of resource-rich networks (network formation problem) and the mobilization of those available resources (network action problem) in a direct or indirect manner. We examine entrepreneurs’ networking intensity and social skills as two components of network agency and develop a conceptual two-path model of resource mobilization. We empirically test this conceptual model using two waves of data collection from a national representative sample of nascent entrepreneurs (n = 457). We find important distinctions in the role networking intensity and social skills play for entrepreneurs’ advice availability and advice mobilization, and thereby their propensity to solve, respectively, the network formation problem and the network action problem. Whereas networking intensity allows entrepreneurs to access new advice directly or build a network of potential advice, social skills are what enable them to successfully extract advice from those established connections. These new insights have implications for practice and for the theoretical understanding of network agency and resource mobilization.