The problems with the status quo have been established, but does the empirical evidence support the effectiveness of formal mentoring programs as hypothesized? A few existing case studies were identified that appeared to be directly on point with this question.
A study from Michigan State University in 1992 compared 212 informally mentored protégés, 53 formally mentored protégés, and 283 people who did not participate in mentoring. The sample included alumni from two educational institutions who graduated from 1956 to 1986.124 The performance measures used were salary, intrinsic and extrinsic job satisfaction, work performance, working relationship with others, understanding organizational politics, lingo, traditions, and goals and
122 National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, The 9/11 Commission Report:
Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (Charleston, SC:
CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2010), 314.
123 Nassim Nicholas Taleb, “‘The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable,’” New York
Times, April 22, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/books/chapters/0422-1st-tale.html.
124 Georgia T. Chao, Pat M. Walz, and Philip D. Gardner, “Formal and Informal Mentorships: A
Comparison on Mentoring Functions and Contrast with Nonmentored Counterparts,” Personnel Psychology 45, no. 3 (Autumn 1992): 624.
objectives.125 The results indicated those informally mentored performed significantly higher on all nine performance measures than those without a mentor, formally mentored individuals performed significantly higher in three performance measures than those without a mentor, and no statistically significant difference occurred between those mentored in informal or formal programs.126 However, the raw scores for the informally mentored group were slightly above the formally mentored group in every measure, and the formally mentored group fell between the performance measures of informal mentees and no mentoring in all but one performance measure.127 Among the recommendations of this study was the need for voluntary participation in formal mentoring programs and careful pairing by the organization of program participants, likening mandatory random assignments to “blind dates.”128 Although this study is over 20 years old, the author claims the results still hold true as recently as 2009.129 Others have also replicated the study results.130
Another study published in 2000 found a difference in mentee benefits between formal and informal mentoring programs except when the mentee or mentor has a certain personality type (as determined by a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator). This study also found that when mentors and mentees share similar personality traits, the benefits to the mentee tended to be higher, but gender or race had no statistically significant correlation to benefits.131 The results of this study tend to support the 1992 Michigan State study above in that similar differences occurred in the psychosocial and career benefits received
125 Chao, Walz, and Gardner, “Formal and Informal Mentorships: A Comparison on Mentoring
Functions and Contrast with Nonmentored Counterparts,” 628.
126 Ibid., 628–629. 127 Ibid.
128 Ibid., 634.
129 Chao, “Formal Mentoring,” 315.
130 Ragins and Cotton, “Mentor Functions and Outcomes: A Comparison of Men and Women in
Formal and Informal Mentoring Relationships,” 544.
131 Matthew Barr, “Mentoring Relationships: A Study of Informal/Formal Mentoring, Psychological
Type of Mentors, and Mentor/Protégé Type Combinations,” Dissertation Abstracts International Section A:
between formal and informal protégés, and also indicates mentoring has the potential to overcome gender and racial differences in the workplace.132
A 2012 study followed 111 pairs of mentors and protégés in formal mentoring programs of nine Korean companies for seven months.133 This study focused on analyzing benefits received by both the protégé and the mentor, including the potential for leadership development in mentors from formal mentoring that it hypothesized had been previously overlooked. Findings included enhanced transformational leadership abilities (reinforcing skills of personnel that keep an organization competitive) and increased organizational support of mentors and protégés tended to value career-related support more than psychosocial support and role-modeling functions.134 The study concluded that while informal mentoring relationships have been shown in literature to provide more benefits, formal mentoring clearly made positive impacts on both mentors and protégés in this study, and it recommended voluntary participation in mentoring programs to produce positive results.135 Granted, this study was conducted in a country with customs much different from that of the United States. However, inter-personal and supervisory relationships are formed between people in Korea as they are in the United States. Thus, conservative application of the findings from this study, which is directly on point with the topic and consistent with the two other U.S. case studies in this section, was determined by the author to be reasonable.
The existing case studies discussed in this chapter document psychological benefits and the positive impact of the mentoring process for both mentors and protégés in formal and informal mentoring programs. Informal mentoring is consistently shown to be better by various degrees than formal mentoring overall, and some researchers theorize the gaps in benefits are due to the structure, short duration, and/or process of
132 Hansman et al., “Critical Perspectives on Mentoring,” 24.
133 Jae Uk Chun, John J. Sosik, and Nam Yi Yun, “A Longitudinal Study of Mentor and Protégé
Outcomes in Formal Mentoring Relationships,” Journal of Organizational Behavior 33, no. 8 (November 2012): 1071–94, doi: 10.1002/job.1781.
134 Ibid. 135 Ibid.
relationship initiation in formal mentoring programs.136 However, formal mentoring programs are shown to be superior to no mentoring and provide statistically similar benefits to informal mentoring for psychosocial benefits.137 Multiple case studies cited voluntary participation as important for program success. A closer examination of a mandatory formal mentoring program implemented by the CHP in the next chapter provides clues to the psychology behind the recommendation for voluntary participation.