Mentoring and the Work-Family Interface

Mentoring and the Work-Family Interface

Research on the mentoring process has grown steadily over the past 20 years (Allen, Eby, Poteet, Lentz, & Lima, 2004; Noe, Greenberger, & Wang, 2002; Ragins, 1999; Wanberg, Welsh, & Hezlett, 2003). However, despite Kram's (1985) critical observation that developmental relationships revolve around career, self, and family concerns, research has focused almost exclusively on the effects of mentoring on protégés' career outcomes (Noe et al., 2002; Wanberg et al., 2003). The mentoring literature has been relatively silent on whether mentors can affect protégés' success in balancing their work and family lives. Although several scholars have alluded to the importance of mentoring relationships in enabling protégés to manage the work-family interface effectively (Kram, 1985; Ragins, 1999; Sosik, Godshalk, & Yammarino, 2004; Wanberg et al., 2003), empirical research is limited (Nielson, Carlson, & Lankau, 2001; Wallace, 2001) and theory is virtually nonexistent.

This gap in our understanding is significant because the escalating representation of dualearner couples and single parents in the workforce has made juggling work and family roles increasingly challenging for a growing number of employees (Greenhaus, Allen, & Spector, 2006). Addressing the gap can reveal when the mentoring process promotes balance in a protégé's life and when the process undermines it. Moreover, examining linkages between mentoring and work-family outcomes is consistent with an emerging relational mentoring perspective that emphasizes learning, growth, and development in career, professional, and personal domains (Fletcher & Ragins, Chapter 15, this volume; Ragins & Verbos, 2007).

The aim of this chapter is to stimulate thinking and research regarding the impact of mentoring on the intersection of a protégé's work and family lives. First, we briefly discuss the work-family interface and highlight two important work-family linking mechanisms, work-family conflict and work-family enrichment. Next, we present a theoretical model that proposes a series of paths through which mentoring affects protégés' work-family conflict and work-family enrichment. We conclude the chapter by identifying directions for future research on the relationship between mentoring and the work-family interface.

It is important to identify two significant perspectives that are not incorporated into the model presented in this chapter. First, our model focuses exclusively on the impact of the mentor on the protégé's work-family interface. More than 20 years ago, Kram (1985) asserted that a mentor-protégé relationship is characterized by complementarity, in which each partner is responsive to the needs and concerns of the other partner. The impact of the mentoring relationship on the protégé as well as the mentor has been increasingly recognized in recent years (Allen, Chapter 5, this volume), and mutuality of learning, growth, and development is a cornerstone of the relational mentoring perspective (Fletcher & Ragins, Chapter 15, this volume; Ragins & Verbos, 2007). Nevertheless, including both directions of influence in our model would have made it excessively unwieldy. Instead, we discuss the mutuality of the mentor-protégé relationship in the context of an agenda for future research.

Second, we acknowledge that employees can profit from a wide array of developmental relationships with individuals of different status levels, both inside and outside the employee's organization (Higgins, Chandler, & Kram, Chapter 14, this volume; Higgins & Kram, 2001). Our model examines the impact of mentoring on protégés' work-family interface through the lens of a primary organizational mentor. The focus of our model on the primary organizational mentor was intended to avoid further complicating an already complex process. As with the mutuality issue described above, we discuss the possible impact of multiple developmental relationships in the section of this chapter devoted to future research.

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