Network ties are essential to advancement in organizations: they provide access to opportunities, political insight, and technical knowledge. Yet networking with the goal of advancement often leaves individuals feeling somehow bad about themselves—even dirty. The authors use field and laboratory data to examine how goal-oriented or instrumental networking influences individual emotions, attitudes, and outcomes, including consequences for an individual's morality. The authors argue that networking for professional goals can impinge on an individual's moral purity—a psychological state that results from a person's view of the self as clean from a moral standpoint and through which a person feels virtuous—and thus make him or her feel dirty. There are three main insights: First, the authors show the importance of a clear conceptual distinction between instrumental networking driven by individual agency versus spontaneous networking reflecting the constraints and opportunities of the social context. Second, the research establishes the relevance of moral psychology for network theory. Third, because people in powerful positions do not experience the morally contaminating effects of instrumental networking, power emerges from this research as yielding unequal access to networking opportunities, thus reinforcing and perpetuating inequality in performanceNetwork ties are essential to advancement in organizations: they provide access to opportunities, political insight, and technical knowledge. Yet networking with the goal of advancement often leaves individuals feeling somehow bad about themselves—even dirty. The authors use field and laboratory data to examine how goal-oriented or instrumental networking influences individual emotions, attitudes, and outcomes, including consequences for an individual's morality. The authors argue that networking for professional goals can impinge on an individual's moral purity—a psychological state that results from a person's view of...