Developmental relationships and managerial promotability in organizations: A multisource study

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Abstract

Managers are now focusing on developmental relationships by providing career-related mentoring to their direct reports, but research is lacking in showing whether such mentoring is in fact related to outcomes that benefit the manager. This study investigates whether self- and direct report ratings of the extent to which focal-managers provide career-related mentoring are associated with perceptions of their promotability as perceived by their bosses (n = 1623) and peers (n = 1597). Results of hierarchical regression indicated that both self- and direct report ratings of focal-managers' career-related mentoring were significant and positively related to boss and peer ratings of focal-managers' promotability. Within a self–other rating agreement framework, results of polynomial regression indicated that higher ratings of career-related mentoring by focal-managers and their direct reports were positively related to both boss and peer ratings of focal-managers' promotability. Furthermore, underrating (i.e., when self-ratings are lower than direct report ratings) was more positively related to promotability than overrating (i.e., when self-ratings are higher than direct report ratings).

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.

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