Antecedents of mentoring support: a meta-analysis of individual, relational, and structural or organizational factors

Journal of Vocational Behavior 84 (2014) 367–384

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Journal of Vocational Behavior journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jvb

Antecedents of mentoring support: a meta-analysis of individual, relational, and structural or organizational factors Rajashi Ghosh Human Resource Development, Room 221, School of Education, Drexel University, 3141 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA

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Article history: Received 21 December 2013 Available online 28 February 2014 Keywords: Mentoring antecedents Individual level antecedent of mentoring Relational level antecedent of mentoring Structural or organizational level antecedent of mentoring Meta-analysis

a b s t r a c t The value of mentoring is growing substantially as organizations take a renewed interest in employee development to better survive in the dynamic and competitive market today. In the wake of this renewed interest, this meta-analysis was conducted to quantitatively review the multi-level antecedents (e.g., individual, relational, and structural/organizational) of different kinds of mentoring support (e.g., career, psychosocial, role modeling) in organizational settings and to revisit the theoretical underpinnings of each antecedent. Results indicated some key antecedents of mentoring support at individual (e.g., protégé's proactivity, protégé's learning goal orientation, mentor's transformational leadership), relational (e.g., affect based trust, perceived similarity), and structural/organizational levels (e.g., organizational support for mentoring, supervisory mentoring). Recommendations for future research and organizational practice of mentoring are presented. © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction and purpose The value of mentoring has grown substantially in recent times as organizations have recognized the importance of relational resources in workplaces, especially in today's dynamic and somewhat chaotic work environments (Allen & O'Brien, 2006; Baranik, Roling, & Eby, 2010; Singh, Ragins, & Tharenou, 2009; Weinberg & Lankau, 2011). Given that the demographic makeup of the workforce and subsequent organizational needs are undergoing shifts of seismic proportions, there is a renewed interest in utilizing mentoring to capture organizational wisdom in the “corporate DNA” and diffuse the same among employees (Silverthorne, 2002). In the wake of this renewed interest, it is important to revisit and clarify our understanding of the different factors that can predict provision or receipt of mentoring in organizations. Doing so would enable Human Resource Development (HRD) professionals to support their employees in optimizing the relational resources needed to survive in a hypercompetitive work environment. Traditionally, mentoring has been defined as an interpersonal relationship where senior and more experienced organizational members provide support to junior or lesser experienced organizational members (Kram, 1983; Kram & Isabella, 1985). Although this traditional understanding about mentoring has morphed a lot due to changes in the nature of work and careers in the past few decades, there still seems to be a wide consensus around the types of mentoring support received or provided in organizational settings. Kram (1983) first identified that mentors provide two different kinds of support, namely career development and psychosocial development. Since then, numerous studies (e.g., Dreher & Ash, 1990; Levesque, O'Neil, Nelson, & Dumas, 2005; Noe, 1988; Ragins & McFarlin, 1990; Scandura, 1992; Scandura & Williams, 2001; Thomas, 1990) have examined the different ways in which these two types of support manifest in mentoring relationships. For example, mentors can enact the roles of a sponsor, advocate, protector, or a coach to provide support related to career development. And, they can be a friend, role model, counselor, or even a parent to contribute to the protégé's

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psychosocial development. While these two kinds of mentoring support have been to some extent generalized across different settings and fields (Ghosh, 2013), a comprehensive understanding of the antecedents of these mentoring supports in organizations is yet to emerge. Even though several scholars have attempted to identify different antecedents of mentoring support in organizations such as protégé's and mentor's personality traits, learning goal orientation, perceived similarity between mentor and protégé, and demographic variables to name a few (Allen & Eby, 2004; Armstrong, Allinson, & Hayes, 2002; Godshalk & Sosik, 2003; Liang & Gong, 2012) and few meta-analyses have been conducted on some antecedents such as mentor and protege gender, protege race, education, tenure, core self-evaluation broadly conceptualized to encompass self-esteem, locus of control and self-efficacy, human capital, and formality and similarity in mentoring dyads (e.g., Eby et al., 2013; Kammeyer-Mueller & Judge, 2008; O'Brien, Biga, Kessler, & Allen, 2010), to date the literature on antecedents of mentoring is scattered making it difficult to derive a clear insight on multi-level antecedents (e.g., individual, relational, and structural/organizational) of mentoring support. The purpose of this meta-analysis is therefore to provide a quantitative review of what is known to date about the antecedents of mentoring supports in organizational settings. In doing so, this study explains in detail the theoretical underpinnings of the various antecedents examined so far in the extant mentoring literature and identifies which antecedents at each level are likely to be the strongest predictors of mentoring in organizational settings. This meta-analytic review of mentoring antecedents is timely given that organizations are struggling to cope with the fast paced changes in work environments and an improved understanding of the individual, relational, structural, and organizational factors predicting mentoring support can enable organizations to better utilize mentoring for their employees to develop and flourish amidst rapid changes. 2. Individual antecedents of mentoring support Several studies have linked individual characteristics, mostly that of the protégés to mentoring receipt or provision in organizational settings. This meta-analysis includes 5 individual characteristics (e.g., proactivity, locus of control, emotional intelligence, learning goal orientation, self-monitoring) of protégés and 2 individual characteristics (e.g., learning goal orientation, transformational leadership) of mentors as previous meta-analyses (e.g., Eby et al., 2013; Kammeyer-Mueller & Judge, 2008; O'Brien et al., 2010) on mentoring antecedents focused mostly on demographics at the individual level without considering these variables and at least two studies providing effect sizes between these individual characteristics and mentoring support were available in extant research (e.g., Ng, Eby, Sorensen, & Feldman, 2005; Underhill, 2006). Although there were at least two studies reporting associations between Big Five personality factors and mentoring receipt (e.g., Bozionelos & Bozionelos, 2010; Bozionelos, Bozionelos, Polychroniou, & Kostopoulos, 2014), this meta-analysis did not include the Big Five factors at the individual level as Bozionelos et al. (2014) reported some of these personality factors to show a curvilinear relationship with mentoring receipt. 2.1. Protégé proactivity and mentoring support A brief review of the literature on proactive behavior reveals that even though proactive behavior has been conceptualized and studied in different ways, “a common thread binding the various approaches to the study of proactivity and initiative is an action orientation toward organizational behaviors” (Crant, 2000, p. 436). According to this theoretical perspective, proactive individuals play an active role in initiating situations and conditions that would be favorable towards their careers unlike non-proactive people who exhibit passive and reactive behavior patterns towards seeking information and opportunities that can further their careers (Bateman & Crant, 1993). Thus, in the context of mentoring relationships, proactive protégés would be more likely to actively seek different kinds of mentoring support from their mentors instead of passively waiting for their mentors to take the initiative (Aryee, Lo, & Kang, 1999; Higgins, Chandler, & Kram, 2007; Turban & Dougherty, 1994; Wanberg, Welsh, & Hezlett, 2003). Hypothesis 1. Higher levels of protégé proactivity will be positively associated with mentoring support.

2.2. Protégé locus of control and mentoring support The notion of perceived control has been examined in the psychology literature in various forms, mostly due to its association with different cognitive, behavioral, affective, and psychological outcomes (Abel & Hayslip, 2001; Spector, 1988; Spector & O'Connell, 1994). Although control beliefs can partly originate from social experiences, extant research indicates that the sense of control over external environment can be a dispositional tendency as well, explained by the construct of “locus of control” (Ng, Sorensen, & Eby, 2006). Locus of control concerns the degree to which individuals attribute the cause or control of events either to the external environment or to themselves (Rotter, 1966). Individuals who attribute control of events to the external environment are considered to have “external locus of control” in contrast to those with “internal locus of control” who believe that events are contingent on their own behavior. Further, conceptualizations of locus of control may vary across situations so that beliefs about control at work may be different from one's control beliefs in personal relationships (Hahn, 2000). Thus, in the context of mentoring relationships, protégés with high internal locus of control at work might be more prone to believe that active engagement with their mentors would help towards improving abilities and skills needed for better performance at work (Noe, 1988; Turban & Dougherty, 1994). Their belief of being able to control work outcomes through participating in mentoring might enable them to actively seek both career and psychosocial support from their mentors unlike the protégés with “external locus of control” who attribute work outcomes to luck or chance than their personal efforts.

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Hypothesis 2. Protégés' external locus of control will be negatively associated with mentoring support. 2.3. Protégé emotional intelligence and mentoring support Mayer and Salovey (1997) defined emotional intelligence (EI) as a cooperative combination of intelligence and emotions that includes the ability to accurately perceive emotions, access or generate emotions that can facilitate one's thinking, understand emotions and emotional knowledge, and the ability to reflectively regulate emotions for emotional and intellectual growth. These abilities collectively contribute towards one's EI as they are interlinked. The ability to accurately appraise emotions can provide a platform for regulating emotions in an appropriate way which in turn builds a foundation for modulating an emotional response to an issue (Mayer, Salovey, & Caruso, 2008). A noteworthy characteristic of EI is its prosocial orientation which can enable protégés to better understand their own feelings and their mentors' feelings and accordingly regulate emotions (both positive and negative) in a manner that would result in receipt or provision of higher levels of mentoring support (Chun, Litzky, Sosik, Bechtold, & Godshalk, 2010; Salami, 2008). Especially, given that the recent mentoring literature has alluded to the possibility of a spiral of negative behaviors in mentoring resulting from experience of negative emotions (Ghosh, Dierkes, & Falletta, 2011), EI can enable protégés to sustain receipt or provision of mentoring support by better coping with any negative emotions that might be experienced in the relationship (Sosik & Lee, 2002). Hypothesis 3. Protégés' emotional intelligence (EI) will be positively associated with mentoring support. 2.4. Protégé self-monitoring and mentoring support According to the theory of self-monitoring, individuals differ in the extent to which they monitor and control their behavior in a manner that is situationally appropriate (Snyder, 1987). The high self-monitors are the ones who control their behaviors in response to social and interpersonal cues and hence are more adept at choosing appropriate body language, facial expressions, or voice tones to fit a situation or an interaction. Whereas, the low self-monitors are less responsive to situational cues and do not modify their behaviors based on other's expectations or the demands of a certain situation. The construct of self-monitoring appears to have resolved a fundamental dichotomy of psychological theory in determining if behavior is a product of situational forces or influences that are internal such as a dispositional orientation (Gangestad & Snyder, 2000). Instead of “regarding behavior as a result of either traits or situations for all people at all times, self-monitoring theory claimed that the behavior of low self-monitors ought to be readily predicted from measures of their traits, whereas that of high self-monitors ought to be best predicted from features of their situations” (Gangestad & Snyder, 2000, p. 532). Interestingly, in applying the theoretical perspective of self-monitoring to the context of mentoring relationships, it is likely that protégés who are high self-monitors may be more amenable to behave in ways that are congruent with the mentor's expectations and thus, can create a favorable impression needed to receive higher career and psychosocial mentoring support. Further, due to their heightened attentiveness to situational demands, high self-monitor protégés can assess the value of mentoring in certain situations or organizational contexts and are more likely to seek out mentoring from others to improve learning and performance (Aryee et al., 1999; Turban & Dougherty, 1994). Hypothesis 4. Protégés' self-monitoring will be positively associated with mentoring support. 2.5. Protégé and mentor learning goal orientation and mentoring support The roots of the learning goal orientation concept can be traced back to the goal orientation theory that emerged in the 1980s from the research conducted by Dweck and colleagues on grade school children (Lima, 2004). When the children were given problems difficult for their age level, Dweck observed that while some were getting flustered, some children responded constructively and took on the challenge of solving the difficult problems (VandeWalle, 2001). The children who remained confident and tried to solve the difficult problems were deemed to have high learning goal orientation which can be defined as a preference to develop one's competence through developing new abilities and mastering new environments. Learning goal orientation has been associated with use of challenges as cues for learning and consequently, individuals with high learning goal orientation tend to be resilient in the face of problems and exert effort to reach goals despite obstacles (Button, Mathieu, & Zajac, 1996; Dweck, 1986). Thus, in case of mentoring relationships, protégés with high learning goal orientations are likely to seek challenging assignments, be open to learning from failures, and persist to learn from their mentors despite any adverse conditions that may arise (Godshalk & Sosik, 2003). Further, in regards to social motivation, individuals with high learning goal orientation would be inclined to learn how to increase their social competence and in doing so would seek to develop more mentoring relationships thereby increasing the likelihood of greater mentoring support (Dweck & Leggett, 1988; Lentz, 2007). As for mentors, the concept of learning goal orientation aligns well with the mentor's role of modeling learning behaviors and engaging in knowledge exchange with the protégé (Godshalk & Sosik, 2003). It is plausible that, having high learning goal orientation predisposes the mentor to have learnt many skills and abilities that they can impart to their protégés through provision of mentoring support. Hypothesis 5. Protégés' learning goal orientation will be positively associated with mentoring support.

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Hypothesis 6. Mentor's learning goal orientation will be positively associated with mentoring support.

2.6. Mentor transformational leadership and mentoring support According to the transformational leadership theory posited by Bass (1985), transformational leaders are characterized by: (1) attributed charisma (i.e., can induce followers to emotionally identify with the leader and transcend their self-interest); (2) idealized influence (i.e., can serve as role models and develop trust); (3) intellectual stimulation (i.e., can help followers to become more innovative and creative); (4) individualized consideration (i.e., can provide learning opportunities through personalized attention); and (5) inspirational motivation (i.e., can inspire followers to question their way of doing things and direct achievement of goals). Transformational leaders are likely to provide mentoring support due to the number of elements mentoring and transformational leadership have in common (Godshalk & Sosik, 2000). For instance, it is obvious that in order to have a charismatic presence and an idealized influence the leader needs to earn high levels of respect which is also the cornerstone of mentoring (Kram, 1985; Shamir, 1995). Without respect, mentors lack credibility and their support is less likely to be heeded by the protégés. Then, intellectual stimulation is a fundamental role that mentors play by honing their protégés' analytical skills, examining their biases, exposing them to different perspectives, and developing them into critical thinkers (Conger & Kanungo, 1998). Further, individualized consideration provided by a transformational leader is comparable to one-on-one coaching sessions that the mentor can engage in with his/her protégé (Bass, 1985). And, through providing inspirational motivation, transformational leaders are similar to mentors in modeling how to articulate and follow through on long term visions and goals (Godshalk & Sosik, 2000; Ragins, 1997). Hypothesis 7. Mentor's transformational leadership will be positively associated with mentoring support.

3. Relational antecedents of mentoring support Several studies have linked relational factors to mentoring receipt or provision in organizational settings. This meta-analysis includes 7 factors at the relationship level (e.g., gender similarity, ethnicity similarity, perceived similarity, self-disclosure, age difference, cognition based trust, affect based trust) as previous meta-analyses (e.g., Eby et al., 2013; Kammeyer-Mueller & Judge, 2008; O'Brien et al., 2010) on mentoring antecedents did not consider all these variables and at least two studies providing effect sizes between these factors and mentoring support were available in extant research (e.g., Ng et al., 2005; Underhill, 2006). Only, the Eby et al. (2013) meta-analysis looked at deep-level and surface level similarity, but, they conceptualized surface-level similarity as a combination of both ethnicity and gender similarity and did not look at them separately. 3.1. Gender and ethnicity similarity of mentoring dyad and mentoring support Quite a few studies including a recent meta-analysis on gender differences in mentoring (e.g., O'Brien, Biga, Kessler, & Allen, 2010) have indicated that mentors' and protégés' gender and ethnicity are likely to influence the type and quality of support in mentoring relationships. However, the effect of similarity or dissimilarity in mentor and protégé gender and ethnicity on mentoring support functions remains relatively less understood. For instance, some studies have shown that mentor–protégé gender similarity is positively associated with higher levels of mentoring functions (Avery, Tonidandel, & Phillips, 2008; Ensher, Grant‐Vallone, & Marelich, 2002; Feldman, Folks, & Turnley, 1999; Koberg, Boss, & Goodman, 1998; Lankau, Riordan, & Thomas, 2005; Ragins & Cotton, 1999; Thomas, 1990), while some indicate otherwise (Allen & Eby, 2004; Smith, Smith, & Markham, 2000). Specifically, with regards to particular kinds of mentoring functions, few studies have associated gender similarity with higher levels of psychosocial and role modeling support (Lankau et al., 2005; Scandura & Viator, 1994; Scandura & Williams, 2001), however, other studies have not supported this finding (Ensher et al., 2002; Sosik & Godshalk, 2000). Similarly, for ethnicity, while some studies have shown a positive association between similarity in mentor's and protégé's ethnicity and mentoring support functions, particularly for psychosocial and role modeling support (e.g., Chun et al., 2010; Lankau et al., 2005; Thomas, 1990), others have failed to confirm this association (Brown, Zablah, & Bellenger, 2008; Ensher et al., 2002; Ortiz-Walters & Gilson, 2005; Turban, Dougherty, & Lee, 2002). The theoretical perspectives of relational demography (Tsui & O'reilly, 1989) and similarity–attraction paradigm (Byrne, 1971) might shed some light on the association between gender and ethnicity similarity in a mentoring dyad and mentoring support. Relational demography draws from social identity theory to suggest that demographics can have implications for an individual's identity to the extent that demographically similar people grouped together can be subject to social stereotypes (Tajfel & Turner, 1986). So, in case of gender and ethnicity similarity, mentors and protégés belonging to the same social group would have a shared understanding of how they perceive each other. Whereas, if the mentor and protégé have different gender or ethnicity, they might harbor misconceptions about each other's behaviors and attitudes due to social stereotypes. A shared understanding about each other will lead to greater possibility of frequent interactions and mentoring support as opposed to misconceptions. Hence, despite the inconsistent empirical findings about the association between gender and ethnicity similarity and mentoring functions, the relational demography literature seems to indicate a positive association between the two. The similarity–attraction paradigm advocates a positive association as well. It suggests that the more similar an individual perceives another to be, the greater likelihood of interpersonal liking and attraction and thus, higher mentoring support (Ensher et al., 2002; Lincoln & Miller, 1979). In addition, other theoretical perspectives such as social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1986) support that mentors and protégés from similar power groups defined by gender or ethnicity (i.e., mentors and

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protégés both belonging to the dominant gender or ethnicity group) develop a common bond that shapes how they identify with each other and hence, gender or ethnicity similar mentoring dyads might be associated with higher level of mentoring support (Ragins, 1997). Hypothesis 8. Gender similarity in a mentoring dyad will be positively associated with mentoring support. Hypothesis 9. Ethnicity similarity in a mentoring dyad will be positively associated with mentoring support.

3.2. Perceived similarity of mentoring dyad and mentoring support Perceived similarity is conceptualized as the extent to which one individual believes that the other shares similar attitudes, values, and beliefs (Dreher & Cox, 1996). This is also referred to as deep level similarity which goes beyond the demographic resemblances in ethnicity and gender in predicting the quality of mentoring relationships (Allen & Eby, 2003; Ensher et al., 2002; Lankau et al., 2005; Ortiz-Walters & Gilson, 2005; Turban et al., 2002). While surface level attributes such as gender or ethnicity are important mostly in the early stages of a relationship, over time, deep level similarity in values and beliefs becomes more salient (Harrison, Price, & Bell, 1998). Mentoring being a long term undertaking, extant research indicates that the more protégés perceive themselves to be similar to their mentors in terms of values and perspectives, the greater likelihood of them developing interpersonal comfort and liking in the mentoring relationship and hence, receiving higher levels of career and psychosocial support from their mentors (Ensher & Murphy, 1997; Turban, Dougherty, & Love-Stuart, 1997). Interestingly negative mentoring behavior is often attributed to attitudinal dissimilarity further lending support to the value of perceived similarity for effective mentoring relationships (Eby, McManus, Simon, & Russell, 2000). The theoretical lens of the similarity–attraction paradigm supports the likelihood of a positive association between perceived similarity and provision or receipt of higher level of mentoring support as well (Byrne, 1971). Hypothesis 10. Perceived similarity in a mentoring dyad will be positively associated with mentoring support.

3.3. Self-disclosure in mentoring dyad and mentoring support Self-disclosure is the extent to which individuals in a relationship disclose or reveal information and experiences (e.g., emotions, beliefs, fears, successes, and failures) with each other (Hinde, 1997). To be considered self-disclosure, the information shared, whether it is positive (i.e., an accomplishment) or negative (i.e., failures or weaknesses) should be personally meaningful (Cozby, 1973). According to the relationship literature, self-disclosure is a central relationship process variable which is critical to relationship development and sustenance as it helps relationship parties to engage in an exchange that is more than surface level conversation (Reis & Shaver, 1988). Generally, self-disclosure both by the mentor/developer and the protégé is understood to have a positive impact through strengthening developmental relationships because both parties feel trusted and valued (Blickle, Schneider, Perrewé, Blass, & Ferris, 2008; Kram & Isabella, 1985). Interestingly, partner responsiveness, i.e., whether the partner seems to validate, accept, and understand the disclosure is considered a critical component of self-disclosure (Ensher & Murphy, 2005; Hinde, 1997; Reis & Shaver, 1988). Thus, it can be expected that mutual self-disclosure between the mentor and the protégé can lead to deeper personal connection and hence, greater provision or receipt of mentoring support. Hypothesis 11. Self-disclosure in a mentoring dyad will be positively associated with mentoring support.

3.4. Age difference in mentoring dyad and mentoring support Although the influence of age difference in mentoring parallels our discussion on how demographic similarity might affect the provision or receipt of mentoring functions as indicated by the theoretical perspectives of relational demography, similarity– attraction paradigm, and social identity theory, similarity or dissimilarity between the mentor and the protégé in terms of age might play out a little differently than gender or ethnicity similarity. For instance, according to similarity–attraction paradigm, if age diversity (i.e., the age difference between the mentor and the protégé) is low in a mentoring pair, then the mentor and protégé are more likely to perceive each other as similar and develop the interpersonal comfort needed for higher levels of mentoring support. While if the age difference is high, it is possible that the mentors and protégés might belong to different generations and hence, might harbor generational stereotypes about each other and lack shared understanding on important issues. However, Lawrence's organizational theory of age indicates that even when age difference is low, depending on whether the protégé and mentor are relatively younger or older, each might apply age-related stereotypes to the mentoring role (i.e., the role of a mentor or a protégé) which would have implications for the provision or receipt of mentoring support (Lawrence, 1988). In case of a low age difference mentoring pair, if the mentor is younger than the protégé, the younger mentor might consider the older protégé to be a “slacker” as protégés are supposed to be younger in mentoring relationships and older individuals wanting to learn in the role of a protégé might be judged in a negative manner. Similarly, the older protégé may perceive the younger mentor as less experienced and hence less resourceful as a mentor. Such prejudices might lessen the receipt or provision of mentoring functions (Finkelstein, Allen, & Rhoton, 2003). Moreover, the ideal age difference between a mentor and a protégé is said to be 8 to 15 years, i.e., about half a generation as if the mentor and protégé are almost the same age, they are likely to behave more as friends than as mentors and protégés (Finkelstein et al., 2003; Levinson, Darrow, Klein, Levinson, & McKee, 1978). Given this,

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the application of the similarity–attraction paradigm seems to be limited when it comes to the influence of mentor's and protégé's age similarity on the provision and receipt of mentoring functions. To date, only a handful of studies have examined how age diversity impacts mentoring functions and their findings have been inconsistent. Out of the few studies reporting correlational associations between mentoring functions and age difference, two studies found a significant negative association (i.e., the higher the age difference, lower the mentoring support as suggested by the similarity–attraction paradigm perspective) (e.g., Chun et al., 2010; Thomas, 1990) while others found insignificant positive and negative associations (e.g., Allen & Eby, 2003; Finkelstein et al., 2003). In an effort to reconcile and better understand these inconsistent findings, the following hypothesis is examined. Hypothesis 12. Age difference in a mentoring dyad will be negatively associated with mentoring support. 3.5. Trust in mentoring dyad and mentoring support McAllister (1995) defined trust as “the extent to which a person is confident in, and willing to act on the basis of, the words, actions, and decisions of another” (p. 25). The concept of trust draws from social exchange theory (Blau, 1964). Especially, affect based trust can develop between two individuals when strong positive emotions generated via one's care and affection motivate the other to reciprocate the socio-emotional connection; whereas, cognition-based trust occurs due to one's sense of reliability on another's competence and ability (Mayer, Davis, & Schoorman, 1995; McAllister, 1995). Both these kinds of trust can result in higher levels of cooperation, especially in the context of mentoring relationships (Bouquillon, Sosik, & Lee, 2005). For instance, the concern out of strong emotional identification due to affect-based trust can motivate the mentor to look for opportunities to extend higher levels of mentoring support to the protégés; and, for cognition-based trust, the mentors would feel more confident in investing their time and effort into providing higher levels of mentor support if the protégé has proven competence at work and thus, his/her ability of utilizing the mentoring support provided can be trusted (Chun et al., 2010; Wang, Tomlinson, & Noe, 2010). Even the rising star hypothesis proffered by Singh et al. (2009) indicates that mentors are attracted to extend career and psychosocial support to high performing protégés who are known to be competent enough to deserve a promotion. Hypothesis 13. Trust (both cognition and affect based) in a mentoring dyad will be positively associated with mentoring support. 4. Structural and organizational antecedents of mentoring support Previous studies have linked different structural and organizational factors to mentoring receipt or provision in organizational settings. This meta-analysis includes 4 factors that can be classified as structural or organizational (e.g., type of mentoring, supervisory status, organizational support for mentoring, mentoring phase) as at least two studies providing effect sizes between these factors and mentoring support were available in extant research (e.g., Ng et al., 2005; Underhill, 2006) and previous meta-analyses (e.g., Eby et al., 2013; Kammeyer-Mueller & Judge, 2008; O'Brien et al., 2010) on mentoring antecedents did not consider these variables only with the exception of the Eby et al. (2013) study that included relationship formality. 4.1. Type of mentoring and mentoring support Mentoring can manifest either formally or informally in organizations. Formal mentoring is a program designed and developed by the organization to facilitate structured mentoring relationships; by contrast, informal mentoring is a naturally occurring relationship based on attributes, attraction and similar interests (Ragins & Cotton, 1999). The differences in formal and informal mentoring relationships may impact provision or receipt of mentoring support. For instance, since informal relationships are initiated based on mutual identification of perceived similarity, i.e., to the extent the mentor and protégé believes each other to be similar to each other (Dreher & Cox, 1996), it is possible that the shared sense of identification can help in building emotional closeness between mentor and protégé needed for higher provision of career and psychosocial mentoring support. As for formal mentoring relationships, many organizations assign mentor and protégé pairs and thus, mentors and protégés lack the opportunity to give voluntary input in choosing the mentoring partner who is most similar to them, both in terms of surface level (e.g., gender, ethnicity) and deep level factors (e.g., values, beliefs, attitudes) (Harrison et al., 1998). Due to assignment by a third-party, the compatibility between mentors and protégés is less likely to be conducive to provision or receipt of mentoring support functions in formal mentoring relationships. Moreover, since formal mentors are more visible than the informal mentors, they are more likely to be under organizational scrutiny and hence, the apprehension of others perceiving the mentor to play favorites to his/her protégé might inhibit the mentor to provide greater mentoring support (Ragins & Cotton, 1999). Hypothesis 14. Compared to formal mentoring, informal mentoring will be positively associated with mentoring support. 4.2. Supervisory status and mentoring support Supervisors may assume the role of a mentor to provide both career and psychosocial mentoring support to their subordinate protégés (Fagenson-Eland, Marks, & Amendola, 1997; Ragins & McFarlin, 1990; Sosik & Godshalk, 2005). The supervisor–subordinate mentoring relationship literature draws from transformational leadership theory and leader–member exchange (LMX) theory to understand how supervisory status can influence mentoring support received/provided (Scandura & Williams, 2004). Scandura and

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Schriesheim (1994) described supervisory career mentoring (SCM) as “…a transformational activity involving a mutual commitment by mentor and protégé to the latter's long-term development, as a personal, extra-organizational investment in the protégé by the mentor, and as the changing of the protégé by the mentor, accomplished by the sharing of values, knowledge, experience, and so forth” (p. 1589). These scholars contend that although transformational leadership and SCM are conceptually distinct, they can interrelate in ways that might advance our understanding of supervisory mentoring. Further, since supervisors develop unique one-on-one exchange relationships with their subordinates, the LMX framework has also been referred to be particularly suited to understanding supervisory– subordinate mentoring relationships (Young & Perrewe, 2000). Supervisory mentoring has been defined as an intense interpersonal exchange between the supervisor (the leader) and a subordinate (the follower) in which the supervisor enacts the role of a mentor to provide feedback and support regarding career and personal development (Pan, Sun, & Chow, 2011). There are several benefits of the interpersonal exchange between a supervisor mentor and subordinate protégé. For instance, supervisors have the first-hand knowledge about subordinate's developmental needs and work demands and can exercise their positional power to provide career strategizing related mentoring support (Ragins & McFarlin, 1990). The easy accessibility and frequent interactions between the supervisor and the subordinate also fosters a closer relationship between them than between the parties of a non-supervisory mentoring relationship (Richard, Ismail, Bhuian, & Taylor, 2009). And, supervisors can be the veteran role models of effective organizational behavior for their subordinate protégés (Dreher & Ash, 1990). Hypothesis 15. Supervisory mentoring will be positively associated with mentoring support. 4.3. Organizational support for mentoring and mentoring support Organizational support for mentoring plays a key role in provision or receipt of mentoring (Young & Perrewé, 2004). Organizational practices, norms, and culture that promote mentoring behaviors and reward mentors for volunteering their time to invest in developing their protégés can be powerful incentives for mentoring support (Wanberg, Kammeyer-Mueller, & Marchese, 2006). As per the tenets of social information processing theory, individuals develop attitudes and behaviors as a function of the information available to them in their social environment (Eby, Lockwood, & Butts, 2006; Salancik & Pfeffer, 1978). Thus, mentors might be more motivated to provide mentoring support and protégés might be more forthcoming in seeking mentoring support if they perceive that the organizational norms and practices tend to reward such behaviors. Thus, perceived organizational support for mentoring defined as beliefs that “agents in the organization recognize the importance of mentoring, that managerial role models for appropriate mentoring are available, and that mentors are rewarded for their mentoring efforts” (Eby et al., 2006, p. 270) is likely to contribute to mentoring receipt/provision beyond the individual and relational factors influencing mentoring. Hypothesis 16. Perceived organizational support for mentoring will be positively associated with mentoring support. 4.4. Mentoring phase and mentoring support Given that the extant literature on mentoring has deemed mentoring to be a dynamic phenomenon that can evolve over time, it is expected that the receipt or provision of mentoring support is likely to vary across the different phases of a mentoring relationship (Bouquillon et al., 2005). Kram's (1985) seminal study had identified four distinct phases of a mentoring relationship, namely: (1) initiation; (2) cultivation; (3) separation; and (4) re-definition. During the initiation phase, the mentor and the protégé start their initial interactions where they are trying to better understand each other's interests, personal styles, and working habits. The mentor can provide some career related support in terms of coaching, providing exposure/visibility or give a challenging assignment during this phase to develop protégé's positive expectations for career development mentoring support. During the cultivation phase, both career development and psychosocial mentoring support are likely to be provided at their highest. Since the mentor and the protégé have spent some time knowing each other by the time the cultivation phase starts, it is expected that they would have grown some level of emotional closeness for the psychosocial mentoring to be at its peak during this phase. During the separation phase the mentor and protégé are expected to disconnect as the mentor has provided sufficient mentoring support for the protégé to be independent and act on his/her own. So, both career and psychosocial support should be dipping down at this stage. And, finally during the redefinition phase, the mentor and protégé redefine their relationship and they can continue as peers giving mutual support to each other through informal contact. Different means of career and psychosocial mentoring (e.g., coaching, counseling, friendship) can continue on a relatively less regular basis. A brief look at these phases implies that both career and psychosocial mentoring support should be more prominent during the early phases and thus, the following hypothesis is examined through this meta-analysis. Hypothesis 17. Compared to later mentoring phases, early mentoring phases will be positively associated with mentoring support.

5. Method 5.1. Literature search Several methods were used to identify studies examining antecedents of mentoring support. First, a computerized bibliographic search of ABI/INFORM, PsycINFO, and ProQuest Dissertations and Theses was performed by using keywords such as mentoring

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antecedents, predictors of mentoring support, protégé proactivity and mentoring support, protégé locus of control and mentoring support, protégé emotional intelligence and mentoring support, protégé self-monitoring and mentoring support, protégé and mentor learning goal orientation and mentoring support, mentor transformational leadership and mentoring support, mentor–protégé gender and ethnicity similarity and mentoring support, perceived similarity and mentoring support, age difference and mentoring support, self-disclosure and mentoring support, trust and mentoring support, type of mentoring and mentoring support, supervisory status and mentoring support, organizational support for mentoring and mentoring, and mentoring phase and mentoring support. The reference lists of each article and dissertation identified were further reviewed using these keywords to find articles that were not revealed by the computerized search. The conference proceedings of Academy of Management (AOM) and Academy of Human Resource Development (AHRD) were reviewed from last 5 years. Also, emails were sent to Listservs of these associations to solicit any published or unpublished studies reporting correlations for the associations considered in this meta-analysis. Finally, scholars were contacted to provide the required statistics (i.e., correlational coefficients between antecedents of mentoring and provision/receipt of mentoring support) if the studies identified for inclusion in this meta-analysis did not report the same. Only for 4 associations between antecedent variables and mentoring support (e.g., protégé's emotional intelligence and mentoring support, mentor's transformational leadership and psychosocial mentoring, self-disclosure and mentoring support, age difference and psychosocial mentoring, mentoring phase and mentoring support), not more than 2 studies could be found that reported effect sizes. Even for these associations, the combined sample size of the 2 primary studies was greater than 500 ensuring high power barring the association of mentoring phase with mentoring support that had a combined sample size of 320 from 2 studies. Also, although for associations of mentoring support with cognition and affect based trust, the number of studies reporting effect sizes were 2, 5 studies with combined sample size of 752 were included to examine the effect size between the higher order factor of trust and mentoring support. In total, 39 studies published in peer-reviewed journals, 6 dissertations, and 1 study published in conference proceedings were obtained and reviewed for this meta-analysis. 5.2. Criteria for inclusion To be included in the meta-analysis, the study had to: (1) report the sample size; and (2) a Pearson correlation or some other type of statistic that could be converted into a correlation between an individual, relational, and/or structural/organizational level antecedent of mentoring and mentoring support as reported by protégés and/or mentors. In studies in which mentoring support was reported by different subgroups (e.g., protégé, mentor), the correlation between an antecedent variable and mentoring support reported by each subgroup was weighted by sample size and combined. Since some scholars have found role modeling to be a distinct support function loading on a separate factor instead of being included in psychosocial mentoring support (Scandura, 1992; Scandura & Viator, 1994), this meta-analysis included studies reporting antecedents of three kinds of mentoring support (e.g., career, psychosocial, and role modeling). Using the criteria listed, a total of 46 individual studies were included. 5.3. Coding of studies Statistics coded from each individual study included sample size, correlations, significance levels, and reliability of the measures. To ensure accuracy, each study was re-coded by the author 6 months after the initial coding prior to conducting the analyses. Some discrepancies identified involved some correlations not being coded when the studies included in the meta-analysis reported multiple correlations at different time points between the antecedents and mentoring support. These discrepancies were corrected and for a single study reporting multiple effect sizes for data collected at different time points from the same group of respondents, an average effect size was calculated for each study to avoid the problem of inflated Ns (Bangert-Drowns, 1986). 5.4. Statistical procedures This study used Hunter and Schmidt's (2004) meta-analysis method because this method helps to isolate and correct for sampling error and reliability of measurement scales (Field, 2001). The correlation coefficient was chosen as the indicator of effect size. Care was taken to code effect sizes from independent samples by checking if multiple papers reported results from the same study. The statistics calculated for each independent and dependent variable combination included the mean correlation weighted by sample size and corrected for measurement error, variance of sample correlations, standard error, the 95% confidence interval, and the Q statistic to examine the variability in the distribution of effect size estimates (Ellis, 2010). Also, the formula provided by Hunter and Schmidt (1990, p. 513) was used to conduct a file drawer analysis in order to estimate the number of missing studies averaging null results that are needed to reduce the effect size to a specified level. Following earlier precedence (e.g., Allen, Eby, Poteet, Lentz, & Lima, 2004; Ghosh & Reio, 2013), an absolute critical value of .01 for effect size was used for the file drawer analysis calculation in this study. 5.5. Variables included in analysis 5.5.1. Mentoring support Studies examining antecedents of three kinds of mentoring support (e.g., career, psychosocial, and role modeling) were included. These studies measured the different kinds of mentoring support with the following scales or with somewhat modified versions of these scales: Ragins and McFarlin's (1990) 33-item Mentor Role Instrument; Dreher and Ash's (1990) 18-item

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mentoring support scale; Scandura and Ragins' (1993) 15-item mentoring functions scale; Scandura and Katerberg's (1988) 18-item Mentor Functions Questionnaire (MFQ). Correlations between antecedent variables and both protégé's report of receipt of mentoring support and mentor's report of provision of mentoring support were included in the meta-analysis. The correlations reported by each sub-group (e.g., protégé, mentor) were weighted by sample size and combined. For instance, for individual antecedent variables, 5 studies included in the meta-analysis (e.g., Blickle et al., 2008; Godshalk & Sosik, 2000; Lentz, 2007; Lima, 2004; Wanberg et al., 2006) provided associations with both protégé's report of mentoring received and mentor's report of mentoring provided. For relational antecedent variables, 4 studies (e.g., Armstrong et al., 2002; Ensher & Murphy, 1997; Lankau et al., 2005; Wanberg et al., 2006) provided associations with both protégé's report of mentoring received and mentor's report of mentoring provided. For structural or organizational antecedent variables, 3 studies (e.g., Fagenson-Eland et al., 1997; Wanberg et al., 2006; Young & Perrewé, 2004) provided associations with both protégé's report of mentoring received and mentor's report of mentoring provided.

5.5.2. Individual antecedent variables This study included 5 individual characteristics (e.g., proactivity, locus of control, emotional intelligence, learning goal orientation, self-monitoring) of protégés and 2 individual characteristics (e.g., learning goal orientation, transformational leadership) of mentors. For proactivity, the studies included in the meta-analysis used 10-item proactive personality scales (Crant, 1995; Seibert, Crant, & Kraimer, 1999). For locus of control, the studies included used the 16-item or a shorter 8-item version of the work locus of control scale (WLCS; Spector, 1988) or the 11-item work locus of control scale by Andrisani and Nestle (1976). For emotional intelligence, the studies included used the 16-item WLES (Wong and Law Emotional Intelligence scale) developed and validated by Wong and Law (2002) and Law, Wong, and Song (2004). For learning goal orientation, the studies included used the 8 item scale developed and validated by Button et al. (1996) or the 5-item measure on LG orientation from the work domain goal orientation instrument developed by VandeWalle (1997). For self-monitoring, the studies included used Snyder's (1987) 18-item scale or a shorter version of the same or the Nowack and Kammer (1987)'s German adaptation of Snyder's (1974) self-monitoring scale. For transformational leadership, the studies included used the Multi-factor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ-Form 5X; Bass & Avolio, 1997).

5.5.3. Relational antecedent variables This study included 7 factors at the relationship level (e.g., gender similarity, ethnicity similarity, perceived similarity, self-disclosure, age difference, cognition based trust, affect based trust). Gender and ethnicity similarities were measured as dichotomous variables with 0 (mixed gender) and 1 (same gender), and 0 (mixed race) and 1 (same race). For perceived similarity, the studies included used the 5-item or 2-item versions of the Turban and Jones (1988) scale or developed a composite scale on deep level similarity. Out of the 12 studies informing the meta-analysis of correlations between perceived similarity and mentoring support, 3 studies provided correlations between both protégé's and mentor's report of perceived similarity and mentoring support (e.g., Armstrong et al., 2002; Ensher & Murphy, 1997; Wanberg et al., 2006) which were weighed by sample size and combined. The rest provided correlations between protégé's report of perceived similarity and mentoring support. For self-disclosure, the studies developed items with reference to items in the Rochester Interaction Record (RIR; Reis & Wheeler, 1991), the Self-Disclosure Inventory (SDI; Miller, Berg, & Archer, 1983) and the Interaction Record Form Intimacy scale (IRF-I; Prager & Buhrmester, 1998). Out of the 2 studies included for meta-analysis of correlations between self-disclosure and mentoring support, both provided correlations of mentoring support with protégé's and mentor's report of self-disclosure (e.g., Blickle et al., 2008; Wanberg, Welsh, & Kammeyer-Mueller, 2007) which were weighed by sample size and combined. Age difference was referred as the absolute difference between the mentor's and protégé's ages by the studies included in the meta-analysis (e.g., Allen & Eby, 2003; Chun et al., 2010). 3 studies (e.g., Finkelstein et al., 2003; Rosenauer, 2014; Thomas, 1990) were excluded as they did not report the correlation between absolute age difference between mentor and protégé and mentoring support. And, trust (both cognitive and affective trust) was measured by the 6-item or a 3-item version of the scale adapted from Brockner, Siegel, Daly, Tyler, and Martin (1997) or Larzelere and Huston's (1980) 8-item unidimensional dyadic trust scale, or the 10-item McAllister's (1995) scale. Out of the 5 studies informing the meta-analysis of correlations between trust and mentoring support, only Wang et al. (2010) provided correlations between mentor's report of trust and mentoring support. The rest provided correlations between protégé's report of trust and mentoring support (e.g., Bouquillon et al., 2005; Chun et al., 2010; Hu, 2012; Richard et al., 2009).

5.5.4. Structural or organizational antecedent variables This study included 4 factors that can be classified as structural or organizational (e.g., type of mentoring, supervisory status, organizational support for mentoring, mentoring phase). Type of mentoring (0 for formal and 1 for informal) and supervisory status (0 for other and 1 for supervisor) were measured as dichotomous variables. The studies included developed 4-item scales to measure organizational support for mentoring (e.g., management recognizing the importance of mentoring and rewarding mentoring behavior) and mentoring phase was measured as a categorical variable (mentoring phase coded as 1 = initiation, 2 = cultivation, 3 = separation, and 4 = redefinition).

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6. Results Table 1 below reports the results for Hypotheses 1–7 on individual level antecedents of mentoring support. Hypothesis 1 stated that higher levels of protégé proactivity would be positively associated with mentoring support. The results indicated that proactive protégés were more likely to receive career (weighted mean r = .261) and psychosocial support (weighted mean r = .182). Thus, Hypothesis 1 was supported. Hypothesis 2 stated that protégés' external locus of control would be negatively associated with mentoring support. The results indicated that protégés with high external locus of control were less likely to receive career support (weighted mean r = −.111), but the 95% confidence interval associated with the mean for psychosocial support (−.309, .094) included zero. Thus, Hypothesis 2 was partially supported. Hypothesis 3 stated that protégés' emotional intelligence (EI) would be positively associated with mentoring support. The results indicated that protégés with high self-reported emotional intelligence were more likely to receive mentoring support (weighted mean r = .234), hence, supporting Hypothesis 3. As the studies providing correlations between protégé's emotional intelligence and mentoring receipt used composite mentoring function scales that combined career and psychosocial functions together (e.g., Chun et al., 2010; Salami, 2008), Hypothesis 3 could not be tested separately for career and psychosocial mentoring support. Hypothesis 4 stated that protégés' self-monitoring would be positively associated with mentoring support. The results supported Hypothesis 4 by indicating that protégés who scored high on self-monitoring were more likely to receive mentoring support (weighted mean r = .12). Similar to protégé's emotional intelligence, Hypothesis 4 could not be tested separately for career and psychosocial mentoring support because 2 out 3 studies reporting correlations between protégé's self-monitoring and mentoring support used composite mentoring function scales (e.g., Aryee et al., 1999; Blickle et al., 2008). For the third study by Turban and Dougherty (1994), the correlations reported between protégé's self-monitoring and the sub-factors of career and psychosocial support were averaged with the higher order factor of mentoring support using the statistical formula provided by Hunter and Schmidt (1990, p. 457) that takes into account inter-correlations among the sub-factors. Hypotheses 5 and 6 stated that protégés' and mentor's learning goal orientation would be positively associated with mentoring support. The results supported both Hypotheses 5 and 6 by indicating that protégés reporting high learning goal orientation were more likely to receive career (weighted mean r = .237) and psychosocial mentoring support (weighted mean r = .296) and mentors reporting high learning goal orientation were more likely to provide career (weighted mean r = .189) and psychosocial mentoring support (weighted mean r = .248). Finally, Hypothesis 7 stated that mentor's transformational leadership would be positively associated with mentoring support. Results indicated that mentors exhibiting transformational leadership were more likely to provide career (weighted mean r = .263) and psychosocial mentoring support (weighted mean r = .447), thus supporting Hypothesis 7. Table 2 below reports the results for Hypotheses 8–13 on relational level antecedents of mentoring support. Hypotheses 8 and 9 stated that gender and ethnicity similarity would be positively associated with mentoring support. For gender composition, the results indicated that protégés in gender similar mentoring dyads were more likely to experience higher career support (weighted mean r = .074), psychosocial support (weighted mean r = .138), and role modeling support (weighted mean r = .129). Thus, Table 1 Meta-analysis of the relationship between individual factors and mentoring support. Variable

k

N

Protégé proactivity Career mentoring Psychosocial mentoring

3 3

481 481

Protégé external locus of control Career mentoring Psychosocial mentoring

3 3

Protégé emotional intelligence Mentoring

Mwr

Vr

SEr

95% CI

Fail-safe k

.261 .182

.001 .006

.02 .046

. 224, .298 .092, .272

75 52

457 457

−.111 −.108

.008 .032

.053 .103

−.215, −.007 −.309, .094

.234

.0005

.017

.201, .267

45

.35

.015 .008

.06 .046

.119, .355 .206, .386

91 114

10.3 5.94

.005

.041

.04, .20

33

4.25

30 29

Q statistic .527 3.06

3.95 14.39

2

627

Protégé learning goal orientation Career mentoring 4 Psychosocial mentoring 4

695 695

Protégé self-monitoring Mentoring

3

832

Mentor learning goal orientation Career mentoring 4 Psychosocial mentoring 4

679 679

.189 .248

.022 .02

.074 .07

.044, .334 .111, ,385

72 95

14.98 13.69

Mentor transformational leadership Career mentoring 3 Psychosocial mentoring 2

815 540

.263 .447

.018 .044

.075 .122

.112, .414 .208, .686

76 87

14.43 23.69

.237 .296

.12

Note. k = number of correlations; N = total sample size for studies combined; Mwr = sample-weighted mean correlations corrected for measurement error; Vr = variance of sample correlations; SEr = standard error; CI = confidence interval; fail-safe k = the number of studies averaging null results that would be needed to reduce the sample-weighted mean r to .01.

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Hypothesis 8 was supported. For ethnicity composition, the results indicated that protégés in ethnically similar mentoring dyads were more likely to experience psychosocial support (weighted mean r = .066). For a mentor who was from a similar ethnical background, the 95% confidence interval associated with the mean included zero for both career (− .092, .066) and role modeling support (−.028, .168). Thus, Hypothesis 9 was partially supported. Hypothesis 10 stated that perceived similarity in a mentoring dyad would be positively associated with mentoring support. The results indicated that in mentoring dyads with high perceived similarity between mentors and protégés, protégés were more likely to receive career support (weighted mean r = .42), psychosocial support (weighted mean r = .596), and role modeling (weighted mean r = .41), thus supporting Hypothesis 10. Hypothesis 11 stated that self-disclosure in a mentoring dyad would be positively associated with mentoring support. The results indicated that in mentoring dyads with high-self-disclosure between mentors and protégés, protégés were more likely to receive mentoring support (weighted mean r = .269), thus supporting Hypothesis 11. Hypothesis 11 could not be tested separately for career and psychosocial mentoring support as out of the 2 studies (e.g., Blickle et al., 2008; Wanberg et al., 2007) reporting the correlations between self-disclosure by mentors and protégés and mentoring support, Blickle et al. (2008) used a composite mentoring function scale that combined career and psychosocial functions together. For Wanberg et al. (2007), the correlations reported between self-disclosure (both protégé and mentor report) and the sub-factors of career and psychosocial support were averaged with the higher order factor of mentoring support using the statistical formula provided by Hunter and Schmidt (1990, p. 457) that takes into account inter-correlations among the sub-factors. Hypothesis 12 stated that age difference in a mentoring dyad would be negatively associated with mentoring support. The results indicated that for age difference between the mentors and protégés, the 95% confidence interval associated with the mean included zero for both career support (− .09, .124) and psychosocial support (− .186, .017). Thus, Hypothesis 12 was not supported. Hypothesis 13 stated that trust (both cognition and affect based) in a mentoring dyad would be positively associated with mentoring support. The results indicated that protégés in mentoring dyads with high level of overall trust were more likely to receive mentoring support (weighted mean r = .592). Specifically, if the cognition based trust between mentors and protégés is high, protégés were more likely to receive career support (weighted mean r = .475), psychosocial support (weighted mean r = .378), and role modeling (weighted mean r = .363). And, if the affect based trust between mentors and protégés is high, protégés were more likely to receive career support (weighted mean r = .603), psychosocial support (weighted mean r = .571), and role modeling (weighted mean r = .501), thus supporting Hypothesis 13.

Table 2 Meta-analysis of the relationship between relational factors and mentoring support. Variable

k

N

Gender composition Career mentoring Psychosocial mentoring Role modeling

13 13 5

2662 2662 741

Ethnicity composition Career mentoring Psychosocial mentoring Role modeling

6 6 3

1405 1405 568

Perceived similarity Career mentoring Psychosocial mentoring Role modeling

12 12 4

2, 146 2, 146 724

Self-disclosure Mentoring

2

917

Age difference Career mentoring Psychosocial mentoring

3 2

Trust Mentoring

Mwr

Vr

SEr

95% CI

Fail-safe k

Q statistic

.074 .138 . 129

.011 .013 .013

.029 .032 .051

.015, .133 .08, .197 .031,.227

83 166 60

29.67 34.34 9.67

−.014 .066 . 07

.012 .006 .007

.045 .03 .049

−.092, .066 .007,.125 −.028, .168

2 34 18

17.51 7.78 4.01

.42 . 596 . 41

.031 .042 .011

.05 .059 .052

.32, .52 .48,.712 .312, .508

492 703 160

67.96 90.38 7.94

.269

.016

.074

.124, .414

52

14.87

647 574

.017 −.085

.009 .005

.055 .052

−.09, .124 −.186, .017

5

752

.592

.039

.088

.42, .764

Cognition based trust Career mentoring Psychosocial mentoring Role modeling

2 2 2

317 317 317

.475 .378 .363

.03 .016 .069

.122 .09 .186

.236, .714 .202, .554 −.002, .728

Affect based trust Career mentoring Psychosocial mentoring Role modeling

2 2 2

317 317 317

.603 .571 .501

.028 .053 .049

.118 .163 .156

.372, .834 .252, .89 . 195, .807

2 15

6.05 3.054

291

29.21

93 74 71

9.56 5. 17 21.82

119 112 98

8.92 16.64 15.37

Note. k = number of correlations; N = total sample size for studies combined; Mwr = sample-weighted mean correlations corrected for measurement error; Vr = variance of sample correlations; SEr = standard error; CI = confidence interval; fail-safe k = the number of studies averaging null results that would be needed to reduce the sample-weighted mean r to .01.

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Table 3 below reports the results for Hypotheses 14–17 on structural or organizational level antecedents of mentoring support. Hypothesis 14 stated that informal mentoring would be positively associated with mentoring support. The results indicated that protégés in informal mentoring dyads were more likely to receive career support (weighted mean r = .105), psychosocial support (weighted mean r = .114), and role modeling (weighted mean r = .208) thus supporting Hypothesis 14. Hypothesis 15 stated that supervisory mentoring would be positively associated with mentoring support. The results indicated that protégés with supervisor mentors were more likely to provide career support (weighted mean r = .162). For a supervisor mentor, the 95% confidence interval associated with the mean included zero for both psychosocial (−.173, .038) and role modeling support (−.006, .18). Thus, Hypothesis 15 was partially supported. Hypothesis 16 stated that perceived organizational support for mentoring would be positively associated with mentoring support. The results indicated that if perceived organizational support for mentoring was high, protégés were more likely to receive both career support (weighted mean r = .176) and psychosocial support (weighted mean r = .187), thus supporting Hypothesis 16. Finally, Hypothesis 17 stated that early mentoring phases would be positively associated with mentoring support. The results indicated that career mentoring decreased as the phases progressed (weighted mean r = − .107). For psychosocial support, the 95% confidence interval associated with the mean included zero (− .113, .258). Thus, Hypothesis 17 was partially supported. The results of the file drawer analyses yielded values of fail-safe k ranging from a low of 19 to a high of 703 for significant results with values greater than or equal to 50 in almost all cases. For example, it would take 75 studies averaging null results to reduce the effect size between mentoring receipt and protégé's proactivity from .261 to .01 (see Table 1). The results of Q statistics analysis examining the variability in the distribution of effect size estimates indicated that the population effect sizes were heterogeneous (i.e., the Q statistic exceeded the critical value of chi-square distribution at the alpha level of .05 and “n − 1” degrees of freedom where n is the number of effect sizes in the meta-analysis) in some cases for associations between antecedents at different levels (i.e., individual, relational, structural/organizational) and different kinds of mentoring support. For example, the effect sizes were found heterogeneous for associations between provision/receipt of career mentoring and: (1) protégé's learning goal orientation; (2) mentor's learning goal orientation; (3) mentor's transformational leadership; (4) gender composition; (5) ethnicity composition; (6) perceived similarity; (7) age difference; (8) cognition and affect based trust; (9) type of mentoring; (10) mentor's supervisory status; and (11) organizational support for mentoring. The effect sizes were found heterogeneous for associations between provision/receipt of psychosocial mentoring and: (1) protégé's external locus of control; (2) mentor's learning goal orientation; (3) mentor's transformational leadership; (4) gender composition; (5) perceived similarity; (6) cognition and affect based trust; (7) type of mentoring; (8) mentor supervisory status; and (9) mentoring phase. The effect sizes were found heterogeneous for associations between provision/receipt of role modeling support and: (1) gender composition; (2) perceived similarity; and (4) cognition and affect based trust. In addition, the association between receipt/provision of composite mentoring support and self-disclosure and overall trust also exhibited heterogeneous effect sizes as per the Q statistics value. Consequently, these associations should be further examined through moderator analysis to examine the factors that could account for the heterogeneity. Some potential moderators are articulated in the discussion of the study's findings. 7. Discussion and implications The purpose of this meta-analysis was to quantitatively summarize the multilevel antecedents (i.e., individual, relational, structural/organizational) of different kinds of mentoring support (i.e., career support, psychosocial support, role modeling). As Table 3 Meta-analysis of the relationship between structural or organizational factors and mentoring support. Variable

k

N

Type of mentoring Career mentoring Psychosocial mentoring Role modeling

Mwr

14 13 7

3058 2849 809

.105 .114 .208

Mentor supervisory status Career mentoring Psychosocial mentoring Role modeling

13 12 5

2960 2685 691

.162 −.067 . 087

Organizational support for Mentoring Career Mentoring 3 Psychosocial Mentoring 3

747 747

.176 .187

Mentoring phase Career mentoring Psychosocial mentoring

320 320

−.107 .072

2 2

Vr

SEr

95% CI

Fail-safe k

Q statistic

.018 .015 .004

.036 .034 .025

.035, .175 .047, .181 .059, .257

133 135 139

54.12 42.64 3.55

.045 .035 . 011

.059 .054 .047

.047, .277 −.173,.038 −.006, .18

198 69 39

133.8 93.47 8.23

.009 .003

.055 .032

.068, .284 .124, .25

50 53

6.479 2.29

.0004 .018

.014 .095

−.135, −.078 −.113, .258

19 12

.134 5.687

Note. k = number of correlations; N = total sample size for studies combined; Mwr = sample-weighted mean correlations corrected for measurement error; Vr = variance of sample correlations; SEr = standard error; CI = confidence interval; fail-safe k = the number of studies averaging null results that would be needed to reduce the sample-weighted mean r to .01.

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indicated by the results, at the individual level, mentor's transformational leadership showed the highest positive association with both career and psychosocial mentoring support, closely followed by protégé's proactivity for career support and protégé's learning goal orientation for psychosocial support. The hypothesis on protégé's external locus of control was partially supported contradicting the expectation that protégés with higher external locus of control might be less likely to receive both career and psychosocial mentoring support due to lack of personal effort to seek mentoring. At the relational level, trust, specifically, affect based trust showed the highest positive association with career mentoring and role modeling support, closely followed by perceived similarity between mentors and protégés. Whereas for psychosocial mentoring, perceived similarity emerged as the factor having highest positive association closely followed by affect based trust. The hypothesis stating ethnicity similarity to be positively associated with mentoring received partial support and the hypotheses stating age difference to be negatively associated with mentoring was not supported. At the structural/organizational level, organizational support for mentoring showed highest positive association with career and psychosocial support followed closely by supervisory mentoring in case of career support. For role modeling, informal mentoring showed the highest positive association. The hypothesis expecting mentoring phase to show a negative association with psychosocial mentoring was partially supported. 7.1. Implications of Findings for Individual Level Antecedents First, the findings at the individual level underscore the association between the constructs of leadership and mentoring, specifically concerning the potential of transformational leaders to provide psychosocial mentoring support. Out of the 5 characteristics of transformational leaders as proposed by transformational leadership theory posited by Bass (1985), transformational leaders' attributed charisma inducing followers to emotionally identify with them and their ability to develop trust through idealized influence seem to be driving their capacity of providing high psychosocial mentoring support. However, there is some confusion about whether transformational leadership is an antecedent or an outcome of mentoring for mentors. While there are some studies that have conceptualized and tested transformational leadership as an antecedent or as being similar to mentoring support (e.g., Godshalk & Sosik, 2000; Huang & Weng, 2012; Scandura & Williams, 2004; Sosik & Godshalk, 2000), only one study (e.g., Chun, Sosik, & Yun, 2012) has longitudinally associated changes in mentor's transformational leadership with different kinds of mentoring support. The study by Chun et al. (2012) addresses this confusion to some extent by showing positive associations between mentoring support and transformational leadership measured both prior to the start of mentoring relationships and after the mentoring relationships concluded. A meta-analysis of correlational associations from all these studies further substantiates the point that it is possible for transformational leadership to be an antecedent as well as outcome of mentoring. Of course it is expected that the act of engaging in mentoring might further hone one's transformational leadership skills, but that possibility does not undermine the fact that the likelihood of provision/receipt of different kinds of mentoring support will be quite high if the mentor has some transformational leadership skills at the start. However, whether all protégés would succeed in receiving high levels of mentoring support from transformational leaders is doubtful. For instance, protégés with low external locus of control, high proactivity, and high emotional intelligence might benefit most as they are more likely to seek and be receptive to the mentoring efforts of a transformational leader. In regards to protégé proactivity, it makes sense to expect that protégés who take initiative to engage in proactive behaviors would stand a higher chance of benefiting from higher levels of mentoring support, especially related to career strategizing. Despite some cautions posed by few authors about protégés being intimidated to approach mentors or to take a leading role in scheduling meetings with mentors (Wanberg et al., 2006), the meta-analysis findings in this study indicated protégé proactivity to have the second strongest association with career support following mentor's transformational leadership. Interestingly, for psychosocial support, protégé's learning goal orientation showed the second strongest positive association after mentor's transformational leadership. As protégés with high learning goal orientations are known to be more resilient at times of failure, it is expected that they will be more receptive to mentor's psychosocial support such as counseling or acceptance/confirmation commonly provided in such crisis situations (Godshalk & Sosik, 2003; Lentz, 2007). The unexpected finding about protégé's external locus of control should be further explored in future research. So, while the meta-analysis confirmed that protégés with high external locus of control are less likely to receive career support from mentors, the same was not confirmed for psychosocial mentoring support. Especially, for the association between locus of control and psychosocial mentoring, the effect size was heterogeneous implying potential moderators. It might be that presence or absence of relational (e.g., demographic similarity) and/or structural (e.g., organizational support for mentoring) factors might influence if a protégé with high or low external locus of control would seek psychosocial mentoring support when experiencing work related stress. For instance, since protégés with high external locus of control believe that they cannot control work outcomes (Turban & Dougherty, 1994), they might attribute their inability to seek psychosocial support in moments of stress to external factors such as lack of demographic similarity with potential mentors or lack of organizational support for mentoring. 7.2. Implications of findings for relational level antecedents The findings at the relational level clearly demonstrate the significance of trust, especially affect based trust in mentoring relationships. As affect based trust is founded on a strong emotional bond between the mentor and the protégé, it makes sense that it would be positively associated with psychosocial mentoring support which requires the mentor to signal approval even in times of failure, show empathy for protégé's concerns, and discuss protégé's anxiety concerning work (Dreher & Ash, 1990;

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Ragins & McFarlin, 1990). However, the findings of this meta-analysis indicated a strong positive association between affect based trust and career mentoring and role modeling support as well. Although, the association with role modeling support is not quite surprising, the association between affect based trust and career support seems a little less obvious. Given that career mentoring concerns support regarding career strategizing, providing assistance in job-related skills, stretching protégé's abilities through challenging assignments, and connecting the protégé to important people (Kram, 1983), it can be expected that this kind of mentoring support is more likely to be associated with cognition based trust, i.e., the mentor's sense of reliability on protégé's competence and ability. Nonetheless, the findings indicate that it is critical to develop an affectionate bond for the mentor to feel safe to provide and the protégé to be receptive to any kind of support whether it is concerned with protégé's career and skill development or his/her confidence and identity development through conveying unconditional emotional or psychosocial support. Having said that, it is important not to ignore the significance of perceived similarity that closely followed the association of affect based trust with career mentoring and role modeling support and also showed strongest association with psychosocial mentoring. This finding confirms the strong association that the multi-disciplinary meta-analysis conducted by Eby et al. (2013) reported between mentoring support and deep-level similarity. Future studies should explore if perceived similarity is a primary precursor to building trust, especially affect based trust needed for high level of mentoring support and if trust facilitates provision or receipt of mentoring support under certain specific conditions (e.g., for protégés with higher vs. lower external locus of control; Wang et al., 2010). The findings about ethnicity composition indicate that all kinds of demographic similarity with mentors might not always yield the best odds for the protégé to receive high levels of mentoring support. Unlike gender similarity that showed low to moderate positive associations with all kinds of mentoring support (e.g., career, psychosocial, and role modeling support), only psychosocial mentoring showed positive association with ethnicity similarity (although low) indicating that protégés in ethnically similar dyads are likely to receive mentor's empathy and positive regard needed to build self-confidence. Applying the theoretical perspectives of relational demography, similarity-attraction paradigm, and social identity theory (Lincoln & Miller, 1979; Tajfel & Turner, 1986), it can therefore be claimed that similar ethnical background enables mentors and protégés to look beyond social stereotypes, develop interpersonal liking, and share similar social power status which motivates the mentor to act as sounding boards and provide psychosocial support for the protégé to better understand himself/herself. Future research needs to further explore the relative merit of different criteria of demographic similarity (e.g., gender, ethnicity) or certain combinations of demographic similarity criteria as moderating conditions for predicting high level of mentoring support, e.g., intersectionality in terms of examining if an African American female protégé is more likely to receive mentoring support from an African American male mentor (dissimilar gender but similar ethnicity) or a Caucasian female mentor (similar gender but dissimilar ethnicity) or an African American female mentor (similar gender and ethnicity) (Chandler, Kram, & Yip, 2011). As for age difference, lack of support for the hypothesis predicting mentoring support to increase with decrease in age difference indicates that the similarity–attraction paradigm as expected is not sufficient to explain how age diversity influences receipt or provision of mentoring support. The lack of a linear positive or negative relationship between age difference and mentoring support as confirmed by this meta-analysis lends further support to the notion that age difference might have a curvilinear relationship with career, psychosocial, or role modeling support. In other words, each kind of support is less likely to be provided/received in mentoring relationships both if age difference between the mentor and the protégé is low or high, but high level of mentoring support is likely if the age difference is moderate (Finkelstein et al., 2003). Although Finkelstein and colleagues attempted to test such a possibility, they could not report any conclusive findings due to low power in their sample. Future research studies can examine the role of age diversity to better understand the nuances and in doing so should re-examine if the ideal age difference between a mentor and a protégé is still 8 to 15 years, i.e., about half a generation as suggested by Levinson et al. (1978). Given the demographic shift in the workforce due to the influx of the Millennials in greater numbers into the workforce (Hershatter & Epstein, 2010), and the advent of peer mentoring (Bryant, 2005), it is possible that the “ideal age gap” and the meaning of “low” vs. “high” age difference has changed. 7.3. Implications of findings for structural/organizational level antecedents The findings at the structural/organizational level affirm that organizational support for mentoring in the form of rewards and recognitions for mentors is an obvious motivator for the mentors to provide higher levels of mentoring support (Wanberg et al., 2006; Young & Perrewé, 2004). Thus, HRD practitioners should be proactive in encouraging a developmental work environment where mentors feel appreciated and get their due recognition as leaders for shouldering the responsibility of grooming their juniors. In regards to supervisory mentoring, although the supervisor–subordinate relationship has been described as an intense interpersonal exchange and supervisory mentoring literature has drawn from the theories of LMX and transformational leadership with implications that supervisors can emotionally induce followers to identify with them (Scandura & Schriesheim, 1994), supervisory mentoring did not show a significant positive association with either psychosocial support or role modeling. Only, provision/receipt of career mentoring was found to be strongly associated with the supervisory status of the mentor. This indicates that despite the advantages of supervisors having the first-hand-knowledge about subordinate's developmental needs and work demands, their role as an evaluator of their subordinate's performance might to some extent compromise their capacity of providing mentoring support, especially, psychosocial mentoring support. For instance, subordinates might feel vulnerable to seek emotional support from their supervisors for work-related stress as doing so might reflect poorly on them. Whereas, seeking support about career strategizing and job-related skills and knowledge

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from supervisors might be a common practice in the supervisor–subordinate relationship as supervisors are expected to coach their juniors on technical skills and knowledge. However, the lack of positive association between supervisory mentoring and role modeling seems confounding as supervisors are expected to model appropriate organizational behaviors as well to their subordinates. As the effect sizes for the associations between the supervisory status of mentors and mentoring support were heterogeneous, future studies can explore potential moderators (e.g., organizational support for mentoring; trust; perceived similarity; demographic similarity) that might influence the provision of psychosocial mentoring and role modeling support by supervisors. Further, future research can integrate the literature on supervisory mentoring with managerial/supervisory coaching (Ellinger, & Keller, 2003; Hamlin, Ellinger, & Beattie, 2006) to better understand how supervisors can help develop their subordinates. The finding about informal mentoring being positively associated with receipt/provision of mentoring support, especially role modeling is well aligned with the extant literature that has commonly expected mentoring to be more intense in an informal, spontaneous forum than within the artificial bounds of a formal mentoring program (Eby et al., 2013; Ragins & Cotton, 1999; Scandura & Williams, 2001). Interestingly though, the effect sizes for the associations between type of mentoring and career and psychosocial mentoring support were heterogeneous implying that depending on certain conditions (e.g., voluntary input for mentor–protégé matching in formal mentoring programs, organizational support for mentoring), formal mentoring might outshine the spontaneity inherent in informal mentoring relationships. Lastly in regards to mentoring phase, although the findings supported the negative association of mentoring phases with career mentoring (i.e., career mentoring decreases with the progress of mentoring phases), similar support was not found for psychosocial support. The lack of significance for a linear relationship between mentoring phases and psychosocial mentoring support might be due to the likelihood of a curvilinear relationship. For instance, given that the mentoring relationships can strengthen the emotional bond between the relationship parties over time, protégés might experience a heightened level of psychosocial support resulting from a strong affective bond by the time when cultivation stage starts. However, after cultivation stage concludes, mentors and protégés are expected to part ways during separation phase and hence, mentors might purposefully lessen provision of psychosocial support to create emotional distance. And, finally, in the redefinition phase, mentors and protégés might re-ignite their emotional connection to some extent to be able to redefine the scope of their relationship. Given that there are only a handful studies examining the association between mentoring phases and mentoring support, future research needs to examine this further to better understand the nature of this association. For instance, future studies can further help to investigate why even though the study by Bouquillon et al. (2005) indicated that contextual differences (e.g., type of organization and industry) might moderate the association between mentoring phases, trust, identification, and mentoring support, this meta-analysis did not show heterogeneous effect sizes for the association between mentoring phases and mentoring support.

8. Conclusion In sum, this meta-analysis attempted to quantitatively review and summarize some key antecedents of different kinds of mentoring support in organizational settings. In doing so, it is important to note that this meta-analysis treated the protégé and mentor-provided ratings of mentoring support as equivalent for the few studies included in the meta-analysis that provided both ratings (i.e., the correlation between an antecedent variable and mentoring support reported by the sub-groups of protégés and mentors was weighted by sample size of protégés and mentors and combined). Future studies might want to treat the respondent group (i.e., mentor, protégé) separately to see if this is a moderating condition explaining the heterogeneity in some of the effect sizes. Further, although the discussion section focused on the top two factors at each level (i.e., individual, relational, structural/organizational) showing strongest associations with different kinds of mentoring support, some individual level factors (e.g., protégé's EI and self-monitoring) and relational factors (e.g., self-disclosure) that showed low to moderate associations with mentoring support functions also merit attention. Future studies can draw from the list of different factors listed in this meta-analysis to further investigate if and how these factors moderate or mediate each other's association with receipt or provision of mentoring support or if there are conceptual overlaps between some of these factors. For instance, it might be possible that protégé's EI can lead to greater self-disclosure in the mentoring dyad which might engender greater trust. Also, given that EI is argued to have some conceptual overlaps with the concept of self-monitoring (Schutte et al., 2001), protégés with high EI might have high self-monitoring capabilities and be more perceptive to organizational support for mentoring behaviors. Future studies can examine such causal links through experimental or longitudinal designs. Further, future studies should examine some antecedents that could not be included in this meta-analysis (e.g., cognitive styles of mentors and protégés, interpersonal comfort in mentoring, relationship closeness, mentoring experience, organizational context and type, cultural values, organizational culture; Allen, Day, & Lentz, 2005; Armstrong et al., 2002; Aryee et al., 1999; O'Neill, 2005; Richard et al., 2009; Wu, Foo, & Turban, 2008) due to insufficient number of studies reporting their association with mentoring support or due to inconsistencies in the manner those antecedents have been measured. As for HRD practice, HRD practitioners can focus on the key antecedents at individual (e.g., protégé's proactivity, protégé's learning goal orientation, mentor's transformational leadership), relational (e.g., affect based trust, perceived similarity), and structural/organizational levels (e.g., organizational support for mentoring, supervisory mentoring) to inform the design of formal mentoring programs or to groom employees (both protégés and mentors) to spontaneously initiate and sustain mentoring relationships. This would strengthen the use of mentoring as a developmental practice allowing organizations to better prepare their employees for changing times.

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