Mentoring in supervisor–subordinate dyads: Antecedents, consequences, and test of a mediation model of mentorship☆
Introduction
Mentoring relationships are recognized by both academicians and practitioners as a valuable critical resource for employees in organizations. Organizational theorists and management scholars have identified mentoring as an exchange relationship whereby both mentor and protégé gain several benefits from each other (Ragins, 1997, Young and Perrewe, 2000, Young and Perrewe, 2004). For example, compared with non-mentored individuals, mentored employees demonstrate higher levels of objective and subjective positive outcomes such as career development, job satisfaction, socialization, organizational commitment, and career advancements (Allen et al., 2004, Eby et al., 2008). Mentors, in return for the time and effort spent in providing support to the protégés, gain positive outcomes such as career rejuvenation, recognition, personal satisfaction, organizational reputation, and increase in knowledge and power (Noe et al., 2002).
While scholars have used various theoretical perspectives to explain mentoring relationships (e.g. leadership, justice, power, exchange, motivation; see Noe et al., 2002, for a detailed review), the exchange process between a mentor and protégé lies at the heart of mentoring. Thus, management scholars have suggested that social exchange theory (Homans, 1961, Blau, 1964) is an appropriate theoretical lens for describing and studying the processes involved in mentoring relationships (Olian et al., 1993, Ensher et al., 2001, Tepper and Taylor, 2003). Based on the social exchange perspective, we define mentoring as a reciprocal exchange relationship between a mentor and a protégé (Young and Perrewe, 2000, Young and Perrewe, 2004). While workplace mentoring has been traditionally defined as a hierarchical relationship between a senior and influential organizational member (mentor) and a junior and less experienced organizational member (Kram, 1983), scholars have identified various forms of mentoring relationships, such as lateral or peer mentoring, supervisory mentoring, team mentoring, and mentoring by an external sponsor (see Eby, 1997, Allen and Eby, 2007, Eby et al., 2007, Scandura and Pellegrini, 2007). The focus of the current study is on supervisory mentoring. Our basis for drawing this boundary is the notion that employees tend to interact most frequently with their supervisors than with other agents of the organization, and therefore, supervisors are in the best position to serve as organizational representatives (Tepper and Taylor, 2003). Moreover, extant literature also suggests that supervisors are in the most natural position to, and have the responsibility to provide career and psychosocial support to the subordinates (Eby, 1997: pp. 135/6), and employees are likely to obtain mentoring from their immediate supervisors (Ragins and McFarlin, 1990, Tepper, 1995, Tepper and Taylor, 2003).
According to social exchange theory, individuals' beliefs about the support they receive from their employing organizations play an important role in effecting their behaviors and attitudes towards their organizations. While individuals' personal values, as well as the quality of the inter-attitudinal relationships that they experience with their supervisors play an important role in effecting these beliefs, research has not systematically explored the roles of these variables in mentoring relationships. Thus, the main purpose of this study is to take insights from social exchange theory in order to study: (a) employees' personal values (i.e. individualism–collectivism) and employees' relationships with the supervisors (i.e. trust in supervisor) as the antecedents of supervisory mentoring antecedents, (b) employees' commitment to the organization and intention to quit as the outcomes of supervisory mentoring, and (c) the mediating role of supervisory mentoring in the relationships between its antecedents and outcomes. The theoretical model that is being proposed in the current study is shown in Fig. 1.
Therefore, this study makes the following contributions. First, based on the notions that mentoring is an exchange relationship between a mentor and a protégé, and that employees regard their supervisors as the representatives of their organizations, we provide a theoretical perspective to look at mentoring as a consequence of employees' personal attitudes, as well as to explore its role in determining the employees' attitudes towards their organizations. Second, we go beyond simple linear regression modeling to investigate more complex relationships as posited by extant theory. Specifically, we use structural equation modeling to examine the role of mentoring as a mediating variable in the relationship between individuals' values and relationships, and their performance outcomes.
Section snippets
Social exchange theory
The basic tenet of social exchange theory is that human interactions are based upon exchange of social and material resources and norms of reciprocity (Homans, 1961, Blau, 1964). The theory posits that people enter into relationships in which benefits and rewards (tangible or intangible) are greater than the costs. Unlike economic exchanges that are characterized by legally-sanctioned contractual arrangements, social exchanges are ‘voluntary actions’ (Blau, 1964) that are embedded in trust that
Data collection and setting
We tested the hypotheses using data collected from employees of numerous organizations in the metro Atlanta area. We selected a research design that would span as many organizations and supervisor–subordinate dyads as possible thereby maximizing the variance on study variables. We elected to distribute surveys through two MBA classes of about twenty students each with instructions that they find respondents who do not share the same boss. In this way, we avoided inadvertent nesting when the
Results
Table 1 shows the means, standards deviations, and correlations among the variables of interest. In order to test the hypotheses, we ran two structural models, as shown in Fig. 2, Fig. 3. Additionally, we ran a third structural model 3 for a further model comparison.
Structural model 1 is our hypothesized model, where mentoring fully mediates the influence of the three antecedents and one control variable, the number of years with the boss, on two outcomes. The model also includes seven control
Discussion
This study examined the role of mentoring as a mediator of collectivism, individualism, and trust in supervisor to affective commitment and intention to quit. The results were generally consistent with our predictions. In particular, both collectivist values and trust in supervisor positively impacted mentoring while individualism had no significant effect. Mentoring mediated the relationship between both collectivism values and trust in supervisors and both organizational commitment and
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A previous version of the paper was presented at the 2007 Academy of Management Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, PA. We thank associate editor Dr. Lei-Yu Wu and three anonymous reviewers of Journal of Business Research for valuable feedback on earlier versions of the paper.