The Impact Of Organizational Politics On Mentoring Relationships

Mentoring in the workplace has become an increasingly popular trend because of its touted success at addressing the career and social related needs of employees. While the majority of the research on mentoring has examined protege benefits, far fewer studies have examined the potential negative effects of mentoring. Moreover, little is known about the antecedents of negative mentoring experiences. A primary objective of the present study was to investigate relations between mentor and protege perceptions of organizational politics and reports of functional and dysfunctional mentoring. In addition, I examined the joint contribution of functional and dysfunctional mentoring to a number of protege outcomes. Data were collected from 93 mentor-protege dyads employed across the United States by a marketing communications business. Results indicated that mentors who perceived their climate to be more political expressed greater motivation to mentor for their own self-enhancement and lesser motivation to mentor for their own intrinsic satisfaction. proteges who perceived their climate to be more political reported a greater incidence of dysfunctional mentoring. protege reports of the functional mentoring they received accounted for unique variance in predicting supervisor ratings of their performance, whereas dysfunctional mentoring accounted for unique variance in predicting turnover intentions, stress, and job satisfaction. The results of this study broaden our understanding of the manner in which mentoring relationships can go awry