Career mentoring in context: A multilevel study on differentiated career mentoring and career mentoring climate

• Date: 01 March 2018
• Author: Christiane A. L. Horstmeier,Doris Rosenauer,Annelies E. M. Van Vianen,Sven C. Voelpel,Astrid C. Homan
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.21879
• Published date: 01 March 2018

HR SCIENCE FORUM

Career mentoring in context: A multilevel study on

differentiated career mentoring and career mentoring climate

Annelies E. M. Van Vianen

1

| Doris Rosenauer

2

| Astrid C. Homan

1

|

Christiane A. L. Horstmeier

3

| Sven C. Voelpel

3

1

University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

2

GfK SE, Nuremberg, Germany

3

Jacobs University Bremen gGmbH, Bremen,

Germany

Correspondence

Annelies E. M. van Vianen, University of

Amsterdam, Work and Organizational

Psychology, Postbus 15919, 1001 NK

Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Email: a.e.m.vanvianen@uva.nl

This study explores how supervisor career mentoring contributes to contemporary organiza-

tional career development, which strives to foster employees' promotability while strengthen-

ing their intention to stay. Specifically, we focus on the implications of career mentoring in

team contexts. Applying a multilevel framework, we distinguish between individual-level differ-

entiated mentoring (i.e., an employee’s mentoring perceptions as compared to those of other

team members) and group-level career mentoring climate (i.e., the average perception across all

group members). In a workplace setting, we collected data from vocational job starters

(Nranged from 230 to 290) and their company supervisors (Nranged from 56 to 68). We find

that career mentoring climate positively relates to promotability, more so than differentiated

career mentoring. Both career mentoring climate and differentiated career mentoring are posi-

tively related to the intention to stay. At the individual level, this relationship is mediated by

job satisfaction. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of differentiated and group-

level mentoring.

KEYWORDS

career motivation, intention to stay, mentoring, multilevel framework, promotability

1|INTRODUCTION

In today’s dynamic and accelerated business environment, organiza-

tions’need for adaptability has resulted in flatter organizational hier-

archies and frequent restructuring programs (e.g., Guadalupe & Wulf,

2008). This trend has changed the nature of organizational career

development, such that lifelong employment and predictable career

paths along hierarchical promotions cannot be automatically assumed

(Voelpel, Sauer, & Biemann, 2012). Instead, career development

needs to become more flexible to ensure an adaptable workforce and

requires career support from supervisors in addition to career self-

management from employees (Lips-Wiersma & Hall, 2007; Sullivan &

Baruch, 2009).

Due to their proximity to and influence on employees’work real-

ity, supervisors play a major role in supporting employees’career

development (Lips-Wiersma & Hall, 2007) and thereby help to

implement and complement human resource management functions

(Alfes, Truss, Soane, Rees, & Gatenby, 2013; Dysvik & Kuvaas, 2012;

Purcell & Hutchinson, 2007). Supervisors may, for example, provide

employees with instrumental support for career advancement

through the provision of learning opportunities and sponsorship

(Ragins & McFarlin, 1990). This supervisory behavior, referred to as

career mentoring, seems a promising means to achieve the develop-

ment and advancement of employees (Kim, Egan, Kim, & Kim, 2013;

McDonald & Hite, 2005; Rafferty & Griffin, 2006).

Traditional approaches imply that career mentoring primarily

operates at the individual level as it enables individualized experi-

ences that support protégés' career progress (e.g., Alfes et al., 2013).

However, the effectiveness of mentoring is contingent upon how

employees evaluate their mentoring experience (Eby, Butts, Durley, &

Ragins, 2010). For example, mentoring effectiveness suffers when

employees doubt whether they can meet their mentor’s expectations

DOI: 10.1002/hrm.21879

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the

original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.

© 2017 The Authors Human Resource Management Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Hum Resour Manage. 2018;57:583–599. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hrm 583

(Ensher & Murphy, 2011). Employees’career mentoring perceptions

are not only shaped by their idiosyncratic mentoring experiences but

also by observing their supervisor’s mentoring behaviors toward

others in the group, such that career mentoring may operate at both

the individual and the group level (Nielsen & Daniels, 2012). We pro-

pose that these different conceptualizations of career mentoring will

have differential effects on supervisor-rated promotability and

employees’intention to stay.

Promotability and intention to stay are important outcomes for

both individual employees and human resource management prac-

tices in organizations. Evaluations of employees’promotability are

important for the career development of individual employees, their

actual promotions, and career success (De Pater, Van Vianen, Bech-

toldt, & Klehe, 2009). From an HRM perspective, promotability evalu-

ations are the input for succession planning and for developing a

talent pool that enables organizations to adapt to changes in the

environment (Conger & Fulmer, 2003; Karaevli & Hall, 2003).

Employees’intention to stay or —the opposite —their turnover

intention is important as it is a predictor of actual turnover, which

may cause a shortage of qualified personnel, financial costs, and

lower organizational performance (e.g., Heavey, Holwerda, & Haus-

knecht, 2013; Park & Shaw, 2013).

At the individual level within a group, different employees estab-

lish relationships of varying quality with their supervisor (Dansereau,

Graen, & Haga, 1975), such that some employees report higher or

lower levels of received career mentoring than others. To assess an

employee’s unique mentoring experience in comparison to other

group members, we adopt Nielsen and Daniels’s (2012) operationali-

zation of differentiated leadership (i.e., differences in leadership

behaviors toward individual followers) and define differentiated career

mentoring as the deviation of an employee’s individual career mentor-

ing perception from the shared career mentoring perceptions within

the group. Differentiated career mentoring characterizes the extent

to which an employee receives relatively more or less career mentor-

ing as compared to others in the group. Differentiated mentoring can

take on a negative sign when an employee receives less career men-

toring than other group members, and a positive sign when an

employee receives more career mentoring than other group

members.

Based on social comparison theory (Festinger, 1954), we will

argue that experiencing relatively more career mentoring strengthens

an employee’s career motivation (Day & Allen, 2004), which in turn

should foster an employee’s promotability as rated by the supervisor

(see Figure 1).

Additionally, while career motivation could enhance employees’

promotability, it could also encourage employees to seek attractive

career opportunities outside the organization (Eby, Butts,& Lockwood,

2003) thereby undermining an organization’s ambition to retain skilled

and talented employees. However, one could alsoargue that differenti-

ated career mentoring will positively affect employees’job satisfaction,

which in turn will tie them to the organization (Allen, Eby, Poteet,

Lentz, & Lima, 2004). We therefore investigate alternative hypotheses

pertaining to the negative or positive effect of career mentoring on

employees’stay intention by examining the mediating role of career

motivationand job satisfaction, respectively(see Figure 2).

At the group level, groupmembers’average mentoring perceptions

represent the overall mentoring climate in the group. Group members

develop “consensual assessmentsof the most significant environmental

features”(Zohar & Luria, 2005, p. 617) and collective sense-making

through exchanging their experiences (Morgeson & Hofmann, 1999).

Like other climate constructs (e.g., Schreurs, Guenter, Schumacher, Van

Emmerik, & Notelaers, 2013; Zohar & Luria, 2005), mentoring climate

assesses the average level of mentoring that group members perceive,

that is, the shared mentoring perceptions of individual group members

(Bliese, 2000).Dysvik and Kuvass (2012) argued that employees’shared

climate perceptions of positive supervisor behaviors shape a favorable

developmental climate in which employees feel supported to advance

their careers. We extend this proposition and argue that mentoring cli-

mates can affect promotability and theintention to stay beyond differ-

entiated mentoring as high-qualitymentoring climates not only support

skill developmentamong all group members butalso signal an organiza-

tion’s serious concern with creating career opportunities for all (rather

than only some of ) their employees.

In this study,we contribute to the literature oncareer mentoring in

two importantways. First, we extend previous researchthat focused on

isolated mentoring experiences of individual employees (e.g., Allen

et al., 2004) by also including the group context of career mentoring.

Individual experiences and behaviors do not occur in a vacuum but are

influenced by the social context (Morgeson & Hofmann, 1999).

FIGURE 1 Research model differentiated career mentoring, career

mentoring climate, and promotability (according to the supervisor)

FIGURE 2 Research model differentiated career mentoring, career

mentoring climate, and intentions to stay

584 VAN VIANEN ET AL.