Public Management Mentoring

• Date: 01 June 2009
• Author: Mary K. Feeney,Barry Bozeman
• Published date: 01 June 2009
• DOI: 10.1177/0734371X08325768
• Subject Matter: Articles

134

Review of Public Personnel

Administration

Volume 29 Number 2

June 2009 134-157

© 2009 SAGE Publications

10.1177/0734371X08325768

http://roppa.sagepub.com

hosted at

http://online.sagepub.com

Public Management Mentoring

A Three-Tier Model

Barry Bozeman

University of Georgia

Mary K. Feeney

University of Illinois–Chicago

Despite the abundance of literature discussing the individual and organizational

outcomes of mentoring, this general literature remains virtually silent on the role of

mentoring in the public sector. The authors review and critique the mentoring literature,

indicating its limitations for understanding mentoring in a public management context.

In particular, the authors highlight the interdependence of organizations, the

opportunity structures of the public sector, and public service motivation that mediate

the outcomes of mentoring in the public sector. The authors then present a three-tier

model that focuses on public management mentoring outcomes. The three-tier model

marries the unique context of public sector work to the extensive mentoring literature

and lays the groundwork for a theory of public management mentoring. The authors

employ the model to generate propositions about public management mentoring

outcomes. These propositions should prove useful for theory development but also for

application in public sector mentoring relationships and programs.

Keywords: public management; mentor; mentoring outcomes; interdependence

More than 20 years ago, Dee Henderson (1985), then director of the Graduate

School of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, noted, “The value of mentors

who contribute to the development of potential talents has been well documented in

the arts and in the business world, but mentoring has not been rigorously evaluated

in public management” (p. 857). For the most part, the mentoring literature has not

answered Henderson’s call. It is not so difficult to explain why. Mentoring seems, in

many respects, one of those organizational and group activities that is “general” in

the sense that it is not context specific and need not vary much according to sector

or organizational type. Employees in the public sector and private sector have many

similar needs; many of the organizational benefits accruing to businesses are no less

valued by government agencies. Almost all the literature on mentoring is general (for

reviews, see McManus & Russell, 1997; Scandura, 1992). Only a handful of

research studies (e.g., Fox & Schuhmann, 2001; Kelly et al., 1991; Klauss, 1981;

Payne & Huffman, 2005; Smith, Howard, & Harrington, 2005) examine the public

sector context of mentoring.

Bozeman, Feeney / Public Management Mentoring 135

Most literature has, to this point, focused on mentoring processes (not outcomes)

in the private sector. Although recognizing that at least some of the private sector

work is relevant to public management and that process is an obvious determinant of

outcome, we argue the need for an outcomes-oriented theory of public management

mentoring. Even if we assume that some aspects of private sector mentoring research

are applicable to the public sector context, more public sector–oriented mentoring

work is required to provide valid insights about what is and is not transferable

between sectors. Moreover, research acknowledges that mentoring programs tend to

reflect the particularities of the organizations that spawn them (e.g., Russell &

Adams, 1997). Another rationale for public sector mentoring research and theory is

simply that public agencies at all levels of government are developing mentoring

programs. A “successful” mentoring outcome in the private sector may be very dif-

ferent from a successful outcome in the public sector.

We outline three primary bases for public management mentoring theory, each of

which points the way to building theory. First, public agencies are interconnected in

ways that private sector organizations are not (interdependence). Unlike private

organizations, including most nonprofit organizations, public agencies, even ones as

seemingly disconnected as the Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology

Laboratory-Pittsburgh and the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics are

connected by common personnel systems and rules, common purchasing proce-

dures, and similar budget and accounting processes. Even more important, govern-

ment agencies are expected to work cooperatively toward goals rather than in

competition or at odds. Second, although mentoring can play an important role in

diminishing career opportunity barriers in both sectors, government agencies have

historically had a distinctive role in ensuring equal opportunity (opportunity struc-

ture). Whether one speaks of the role of the military in advancing minorities or of

the increasing proportion of women in middle and higher positions in federal gov-

ernment, government agencies often have been in the vanguard in providing

increased opportunity. Because mentoring is, among its other functions, a means of

career advance, public sector mentoring blends especially well with the need for

public sector leadership in advancing opportunity. A third reason for a distinctively

public sector approach to mentoring is that public service ideals often play a central

role in public management (public service motivation—PSM). A public-focused

mentoring can both put these motivational values to use and at the same time, draw

from them to enhance the effectiveness of mentoring. Taken together, these three

points make a case for a theory of public management mentoring.

In addition to theory-based rationales for a distinctively public management

approach to mentoring, contemporary developments in the public services, especially

the federal government, underscore the need for more attention to public context.

With the impending retirement of the baby boom generation of federal executives

(Bordia & Cheesebrough, 2002; Elliott, 1995; Light, 2002), mentoring appears to