The Gendered Complexity of Sponsorship: How Male and Female Sponsors’ Goals Shape Their Social Network Strategies

Providing sponsorship, when senior colleagues (sponsors) mobilize resources in their social network on junior colleagues’ (protégés) behalf, is consequential to the effective functioning of organizations. Yet, the psychological processes underlying male and female sponsors’ goals, priorities, and strategies for activating resources in their networks for protégés are not well understood. We conduct four studies to examine male and female sponsors’ goals and the resulting impact on their approach to activating resources in their social network. Studies 1a and 1b provide converging, initial evidence that men approach sponsorship with less complexity than women, by setting fewer goals that focus more on benefiting themselves. Study 2 provides additional evidence: male sponsors are more likely than female sponsors to perceive sponsorship as an opportunity to benefit themselves while female sponsors perceive sponsorship as an opportunity to benefit their protégés. Study 3 experimentally links the differences in goal pursuit to sponsors’ social network strategies: when asked to balance protégé-centric and sponsor-centric goals, women cognitively activate networks higher in closure, but men activate sparse networks regardless of their goals. The implications of these network activation configurations for understanding the sponsorship process are discussed.