Developmental relationships and managerial promotability in organizations: A multisource study
Section snippets
Theoretical background and hypothesis development
The process model of Wanberg et al. (2003) provided the theoretical framework for the present study. Though the model's focus is primarily on formal mentoring processes (where an older, more established mentor works formally with a younger, lesser-experienced protégé), Wanberg and colleagues do suggest that the model could also be used for informal mentoring relationships as well. It is evident that the study and conceptualization of mentoring is much broader than the traditional, formal
Participants and procedure
The sample for this study came from multisource data of 1623 practicing American managers from more than 250 different companies collected in 2008. Participants came from a variety of industries, with 56.75% coming from the business sector (e.g., finance, health, manufacturing, transportation, and retail), 11.71% from the private nonprofit sector (e.g., education and human services), and 31.24% from the public sector (e.g., education, government, and military). These managers ranged in age from
Results
Table 1 depicts the means, standard deviations and intercorrelations among the variables under investigation. Table 1 shows significant, positive bivariate relationships between self-ratings of career-related mentoring behaviors and boss and peer ratings of promotability perceptions, and between direct report ratings of career-related mentoring behaviors and boss and peer ratings of promotability perceptions. However, direct report ratings were more highly correlated with both outcome measures
Discussion
Managers are encouraged to be coaches, teachers, or mentors in modern organizations (Senge, 1990). Many feel that in order to be successful, managers in modern organizations may need to concentrate more on developing their employees (Agarwal et al., 2009, Bass, 2008, Ellinger et al., 2003, Murrell et al., 1999, Richard et al., 2008, Sosik and Jung, 2010). Though notable research has provided valuable information about the significant outcomes of providing such developmental behaviors as
Acknowledgments
Portions of this manuscript are based on a paper presented in a symposium at the 25th annual meeting of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Atlanta, Georgia. The authors would like to thank David Altman, Jennifer Deal, Kelly Hannum, Rich Marcy, Cindy McCauley, Ali O'Dea, Marian Ruderman, and Sarah Stawiski in offering their insights, suggestions, and critiques of earlier versions of the manuscript.
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The order of the authors is alphabetical. The authors contributed equally to this manuscript.