Networking practices and networking cultures

Scholars and practitioners have long acknowledged the role of networks and networking in the entrepreneurship process. Entrepreneurs depend on their social networks to gather the knowledge and resources necessary to start and grow a new firm and empirical evidence suggests that entrepreneurs with larger and more diverse networks are more likely to survive and prosper. However, researchers have typically seen networking by entrepreneurs as an instrumental practice designed to help their firm rather than as a social activity embedded in regional and industrial cultural structures. This chapter employs a Bourdieuian framework to study the networking practices of entrepreneurs in two Canadian cities in order to draw out the cultural embeddedness of networking practices.