In this chapter, the study gives an overview and a summary of relevant literatures on mentoring and personal learning in workplace, what is mentoring, the function and advantage form mentoring, the outcomes from mentoring relationship, importance of personal learning in nowadays workplace, the relationship between mentoring and personal learning.
Mentoring in Workplace Definition of Mentoring
Regarding origin of mentor term, it came from the Greek mythology. In the story of Odyssey, when Ithaca, the king of country, left for the Trojan War, he entrusted young prince to his old friend, Mentor. Therefore Mentor, as an adviser, sustained great responsibility on guiding and assisting young prince (Daloz, 2012). The term of mentor has been widely used since then, and it turned out to be the meaning of instruction. In the past two decades, there have been relatively many studies documenting application of mentoring which might bring benefit and advantage for not only the organization, but also mentor and protégé at the same time.
Kram (1988b) remarked that “mentoring at work” is defined as relationships between mentor and protégé that help individuals’ career development at the workplace, and mentoring relationship can satisfy protégés’ different needs in the early, middle, and later career stages. In the early perspective, mentoring relationship traditionally exist in junior and senior employees within the organization. At that time, relatively many studies focused on outcomes of protégés’
career development, for instance, promotion rate and compensation, after application of mentoring was implemented (Dreher & Ash, 1990; T. A. Scandura, 1992; Whitely, Dougherty,
& Dreher, 1991). In addition, Russell and Adams (1997) defined mentoring as an “interpersonal exchange” between a more experienced employee (i.e. the mentor) who provides help
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regarding career and personal problems and a less experienced employee (i.e. the protégé).
Generally, mentors are frequently expected to play an important role between organization and less experienced employee. In order to improve organizational performance and resolve employees’ problems, organization assigns certain employee who could provide support, direction, and feedback to other employee. Moreover, Noe, Greenberger, and Wang (2002) also stated that protégé can receive support which related to career and personal development such as advice, counsel, feedback during the process of intense interpersonal exchange. Mentoring is also regarded as exchange relationship. Besides protégé, mentor also benefit from application of mentoring. Because when individuals enter the organization, it’s inevitable to go through learning and adjustment process constantly. During the learning and adjustment process, each employee needs to understand own organizational role and develop potential personal networking which is linked with positive outcomes such as career development (Van-Emmerik, 2004).
Similarly, Eby (1997) defined mentoring as a mechanism in the workplace where individuals are expected to develop skills and ability for adapting organizational changes. The advantages of mentoring not only bring out positive outcomes of career development, but also encourage employees’ learning in the workplace. Her definition also pointed out that current organizations are undergoing unexpected changes. For instance, rapid technical advancement in competitive market might have impact on organizational strategy, work design, and organizational structure as well.
Mentoring Function in Workplace
In the opinion of Kram (1988a), as shown in Table 2.1, protégés generally receive two critical types of functions, career function and psychosocial function, from their mentor. The first type of function is “career functions.” Career functions include numerous behaviors that assist protégés in acquiring skill and facilitating advancement in the workplace. Kram (1988a)’s
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study showed that five specific behaviors involve: coaching the protégé; sponsoring protégés’
promotions; protecting the protégés; increasing protégés’ exposure and visibility; and providing challenging assignments. The second type of function is “psychosocial functions.”
Psychosocial functions uplift the effectiveness of protégés’ professional and personal growth, identity to the organization, self-worth in the organization, and self-efficacy which helps building up trust, interpersonal ponds in the mentoring relationship. Psychosocial functions also involve a range of behaviors such as serving as role model who could deliver positive attitude, value to the protégé; providing confirmation, acceptance, counseling, friendship and role modeling.
Table 2.1.
Mentoring Functions
Type Behavior
Career function Sponsorship
Coaching Protection
Providing challenging assignments Increasing exposure and invisibility Psychosocial function Role modeling
Acceptance and confirmation Counseling
Friendship
Kram (1988b) emphasized the more the number of functions offered by mentor, the more profitable mentoring relationship will be. However, career function and psychosocial function might have different influence on outcomes of protégés due to various factors. The impact of
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career function on the protégés will differ by mentor’s position in the workplace, while impact of psychosocial function on the protégés depends on quality of mentoring relationship.
Moreover, as reported by Allen, Eby, Poteet, Lentz, and Lima (2004) and Whitely et al. (1991), different mentoring functions predicted different protégé outcomes. As shown in studies, career function might be predictor of protégés’ compensation and promotions, and psychosocial function might be predictor of protégés’ satisfaction of mentoring relationship. Both career function and psychosocial functions could be predictor of protégés’ job and career satisfaction.
Therefore, application of mentoring is widely used within different industry. Both Fulton and Hon (2010) and Sekhosana (2011) supported mentoring functions were beneficial to employees in manufacturing firm. However, manufacturing firms now in Taiwan are facing challenges such as high competition, skill shortage and high employee turnover rate in work environment.
Little is known for which mentoring functions should be emphasized on solving employees’
problems which brought out by rapid change in workplace.
Mentoring Relationship in Workplace
Because application of mentoring bring out potential benefits, it’s not surprising that organizations have begun to apply mentoring program on employees. Mentoring has been recognized as a vital developmental resource in organization (Crocitto, Sullivan, & Carraher, 2005; Mezias & Scandura, 2005). Mentoring also can stand for organizational vitality because it values and promotes individual and organizational learning. With application of mentoring, employees are better able to manage their own learning and development because mentoring relationship strengthens relationship throughout whole organization (Zachary, 2011). As relationship deepen between mentor and protégé, employee feel stronger connection to the organization as well. According to Zachary (2011), not only protégé and mentor, but also the organization can gain from relationship established.
Generally, mentoring relationship could exist formally and informally (Kram, 1983).
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Formal mentoring relationship started with organizational program that specifically assigns mentors and protégés for certain purpose and/or framework in requested period. Compared with formal mentoring relationship, informal mentoring relationship has little or no intervention by organization (Singh, Bains, & Vinnicombe, 2002; Wanberg, Welsh, & Hezlett, 2003).
Formal and informal mentoring relationship differs based on numerous dimensions. An informal relationship started from developmental need (Kram & Isabella, 1985). The informal relationship helps mentor lift importance of position in the organization and reaches achievement that making contribution for future generation. At the same time, protégé get guidance, support, and affirmation in the early career development. The informal mentoring develops by mentor and protégé’s identification mutually. Compared with informal mentoring, formal mentoring develops relationship through organization. Both mentor and protégé have to enter the relationship for meeting organizational expectation. As a result, formal mentor and protégé may less be motivated to achieve purpose of mentoring.
There are two significant distinctions between formal and informal mentoring relationship.
First, formal mentoring relationship is built with support of organization while informal mentoring relationship is built due to natural interaction of mentor and protégé. Second, formal relationship has a limited time frame set by organization while informal relationship continues as long as both mentor and protégé’s involvement exist (Allen, Day, & Lentz, 2005; Lyons &
Oppler, 2004). Allen and Eby (2004) compared informal and formal mentoring provided by mentor. They indicated no differences in mentors’ self-report of the career or psychosocial mentoring function. However, some studies pointed out that protégé reported of mentoring provided in difference due to types of mentorship (Ragins, Cotton, & Miller, 2000; Scandura
& Williams, 2001). As times change and technology develops, mentoring relationship has developed other type in workplace.
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In the past, mentoring relationships tend to only take hierarchical, one-on-one approach in consideration. As organizational development has different structures, organization also change the way for developing the talent. Nowadays, organization may take different form to build mentoring relationship. Theses role of mentor can be superiors, subordinated, peers, team member, or external consultants. Although the position of mentors in workplace is different, they can still offer a variety of mentoring functions such counseling, coaching, sponsoring, skill building, preparing for advancement, role modeling, and giving feedback.
Personal Learning in Workplace Definition of Personal Learning
Complicated changes in the nature of work content leads to the urgent need for employees to acquire the capability for continuous learning. From adult learning literature, personal learning involves adjustment in attitudes, behavior, and character of the learner (Rogers &
Allender, 1983). Kegan (1995) stated that individuals must acquire capacity of learning how to cope with change within organization. Hall (1996) highlighted importance of learning that ability to increasingly grow and change is essential for employees and organization. Rawson (2000) explained learning is important because learning results in forming a new way of personal development especially in changing world. Kram (1996) defined “personal learning”
as a way acquiring knowledge and skills for individual development in workplace. Such personal learning is important element in current workplace which positively related to employability for employee and become competitive advantage for organizations.
In this study, author will use two important type of personal learning that reviewed studies above suggested. Hall (2002) proposed the dimensions of career effectiveness which clarified the types of learning in workplace. In the same year, Lankau and Scandura (2002) addressed the more detailed explanation to personal learning especially focusing on the personal
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development in short term. The first type of personal learning is relational job learning.
Relational job learning is defined as increased individuals’ understanding about the connection and interdependence of job with others. Individual should know the context of work and be able to seek relation to others. The second type of personal learning is personal skill development. Personal skill development is defined as acquirement of new skill that makes individuals have better working relationship. Individual should have ability to solve problems by communicating effectively, listening attentively, and be willing to develop relationship in the workplace. Both two types of personal learning focus on personal development in the short term. Current manufacturing firms should act rapidly to need of customer. As a result, employee in manufacturing firms today should enhance their links of effectiveness between actions and outcomes by accepting others’ feedback and build technical skill through working relationship. Therefore, personal learning becomes important in workplace.
Importance of Personal Learning in Manufacturing Firms
According to the statistics presented by department of statistics ministry of economic affairs (2013), manufacturing industry accounting for the proportion of overall economy has declined in recent years. Main reasons result from changes in environment. For instance, the combination of manufacturing industry and service industry lead to new economic system;
open but competitive business environment; labor shortage; limited resource; replacement from exported products; investment to foreign enterprises; globalization and outward industries. For the factors in environment above, organization should strengthen unique competitive advantages. For example, traditional manufacturers add servitization to strategy. By creating additional value on products, manufacturers not only successfully defend from competition, but also keep distinctive and long-lived product-service offerings (Baines, Lightfoot, Benedettini, & Kay, 2009). However, in order to change value chain from traditional manufacturing to servitization, organizations need the talent who can learn and act to need of
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Ability to learn is important to employee and organization. Through learning, employee and organization can successfully transfer the new knowledge to product and service. As a result, organization can enhance competitive advantage. Nowadays, manufacturing firms have recognized importance of human resource development. For human resource development, organizations need to arrange training course for their employees. The purpose of training is to effectively transfer skill and knowledge to all employees. Both organization and employees can enhance own value. In terms of enterprise scale, large manufacturing firms keep superior capital while small and medium manufacturing firms have limited capital and human resource.
However, although training program is necessary, but training program is relatively costly and time-consuming to organization. Moreover, learning from training program is not sufficient to keep pace with demands of work and profession in current workplace. Individuals often observe experienced employees or others to learn new knowledge to keep up with the required skill and ability. Therefore, mentoring is appropriate way for personal learning in workplace (Kram, 1988a; Lankau & Scandura, 2002).
Mentoring and Personal Learning
The mentoring has been discussed for over past two decades while only a little number of studies has mainly focus on personal learning. Numerous studies have suggested that application of mentoring may assist employees acquire ability to deal with stressful change in workplace (Kram & Hall, 1989; Scandura & Siegel, 1995). Kram and Hall (1989) conducted the survey of managers and engineers in manufacturing firm which is being reorganized and downsized. Result of survey shows that stressful or poor working conditions are positively associated with interest in application of mentoring. Scandura and Siegel (1995) examined mentoring relationship in two accounting firms which had been merged. Study shows that
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protégé seek psychosocial support more than career support from mentors due to stress and uncertainty resulted from merge. In the opinion of Scandura and Siegel (1995), change in the workplace increased requirement for learning, and application of mentoring can be a strategy to improve employees’ performance. Both studies suggest that mentoring may help employees enhance personal learning associated with adaptability, flexibility and reducing uncertainty.
Several studies have focused on how environmental and organizational changes affect mentoring relationship. Hall (1996) explained how changes in workplace altered nature of mentoring. Therefore, mentors also have opportunity to learn from protégé. Hall (1996) suggested that different form of relationships enhance personal learning. Clawson (1996) conducted the prescriptive study that report nature of mentoring relationship will alter because of the change in business environment. Both studies pointed out protégé may be coaching mentors on new technologies for coping with fast-paced change.
Several studies have remarked that a single, traditional mentoring relationship may not be sufficient to satisfy the learning need of employees especially facing dynamic organizational environmental and job. Eby (1997) emphasized that employee should acquire diverse skills such as job-related skills or career-related skills during organizational transitions. She also proposed an integrated typology of alternative forms of mentoring which could enhance personal learning, as shown in Figure 2.1. De Janasz, Sullivan, and Whiting (2003) emphasized employees need mentors from different background in the workplace who can help them for continuous learning and become an expertise.
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Intra-team Mentoring
Inter-team Mentoring
Co-worker Mentoring
Survivor Mentoring
Peer Mentoring for Domestic Relocators
Peer Mentoring for International Relocators
Hierarchical Mentoring for Domestic Relocators
Hierarchical Mentoring for International Relocators
Group Professional Association Mentoring
External Sponsor-Protégé Mentoring
Figure 2.1. A typology of alternative forms of mentoring. Adapted from “Alternative forms of mentoring in changing organizational environments: A conceptual extension of the mentoring literature,” by Eby, L. T., 1997, Journal of Vocational Behavior, 51(1), p.130.
Higgins and Kram (2001) indicated that different types of developmental networks of mentoring would affect the protégés’ personal learning. They also pointed out employees with stronger ties of networks are more likely to possess higher level of personal learning. In other words, the psychosocial functions increase the opportunity for learning. Besides focusing on mentoring relationship in different forms, some studies have indicated personal learning is one of outcomes of the application of mentoring.
According to Dymock (1999), mentoring relationship can make contribution to build learning organization by encouraging sharing of knowledge and professional development.
Lateral
Hierarchical Form of the Mentor-Protégé Relationship
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Moreover, both mentors and protégés reported learning during the process. Similarly, Lankau and Scandura (2002) examined the relationship between mentoring functions and personal learning and found that personal learning mediated the relationship between mentoring function and job attitudes. This study noted the link between mentoring functions, personal learning, job attitudes which stressed importance of learning.
To sum up, the studies have addressed the positive outcomes from mentoring. These studies can be categorized in two types. First, the studies addressed past researches that suggesting application of mentoring can be a strategy to help individuals in workplace adapt to organizational change. Most of studies are exploratory or prescriptive because it’s hard to measure learning of employee directly. Second, the studies have examined relationship between mentoring and personal learning. However, little is known about process of personal learning. What is learned and how mentor and protégé learn is also important.
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