Mentoring

by

Dawn E. Chandler

• LAST REVIEWED: 01 March 2023
• LAST MODIFIED: 28 January 2013
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199846740-0049

Introduction

For over thirty years mentoring has been a substantive topic in the management literature. Mentoring at its core is a topic dedicated to the role that relationships play in furthering individuals’ growth and personal development and to employees’ learning in organizational settings. Mentoring research offers practical guidance to individuals who want to cultivate and manage ongoing developmental relationships (either as protégés or as mentors) and to organizational representatives charged with developing formal mentoring programs for their organizations. Substantial headway has been made in terms of understanding key variables and relationships within the nomological network of mentoring; however, much more research remains in numerous areas, including mentoring processes, mechanisms that drive outcomes, formal mentoring design characteristics, cross-cultural factors, and societal and organizational influences, among others.

Books

In 2007 two handbooks written by well-known scholars in the field reviewed extant research on mentoring. Ragins and Kram 2007 focuses on workplace mentoring, offering a thorough review of theoretical perspectives, empirical studies, and implications for practitioners. Allen and Eby 2007 reviews workplace mentoring, youth mentoring, and academic mentoring and proposes an integration of mentoring perspectives. Allen, et al. 2009 brings an evidence-based approach to the design and implementation of formal mentoring programs, providing practical guidance to organizational design practitioners and others. Clutterbuck and Ragins 2001 explores diversity and mentoring through a range of national settings. Luecke and Ibarra 2004 offers practical, foundational mentoring and coaching advice to aspiring mentors and protégés to enable employee and personal growth most effectively.

• Allen, Tammy D., and Lillian T. Eby, eds. The Blackwell Handbook of Mentoring: A Multiple Perspectives Approach. Oxford: Blackwell, 2007.

  DOI: 10.1111/b.9781405133739.2007.x

  A must-have handbook for those seeking to understand mentoring. Takes an interdisciplinary approach, tackling methodological issues and theoretical perspectives and offering bridging insights across disciplines. Like Belle R. Ragins and Kathy E. Kram, Allen and Eby are prolific scholars and leading thinkers in the field, and they similarly secured participation from a number of well-known mentoring researchers.

• Allen, Tammy D., Lisa M. Finkelstein, and Mark L. Poteet. Designing Workplace Mentoring Programs: An Evidence-Based Approach. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.

  DOI: 10.1002/9781444310320

  An up-to-date, evidence-based approach to designing formal mentoring programs that includes practical training tools and insights and leverages empirical research and case studies from organizations.

• Clutterbuck, David, and Belle R. Ragins, eds. Mentoring and Diversity: An International Perspective. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2001.

  An important work that brings together perspectives from multiple national settings based on interviews, case studies, and qualitative data to offer guidance to practitioners interested in leveraging mentoring to promote a diverse workforce and scholars seeking to understand the complexities of diversity and mentoring.

• Luecke, Richard, and Herminia Ibarra. Coaching and Mentoring: How to Develop Top Talent and Achieve Stronger Performance. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2004.

  Overviews mentoring and coaching essentials and offers tips and action steps to become a better mentor and more receptive protégé and to harness both for the benefit of the organization.

• Ragins, Belle R., and Kathy E. Kram, eds. The Handbook of Mentoring at Work: Theory, Research, and Practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2007.

  A critical read for those serious about understanding mentoring. Thoroughly and systematically reviews every key topic in the field and provides insights for practitioners interested in developing formal programs. Ragins and Kram are leading thinkers in the field, and their handbook includes a number of key contributors to mentoring.