Is More Truly Merrier?: Mentoring and the Practice of Law (Survey‪)‬

MENTORING RELATIONSHIPS ARE WIDELY APPLAUDED FOR their success at socializing and integrating junior professionals into their new organizational environment and professional roles and responsibilities. In recent years, a flurry of research activity, including several meta-analyses (Allen et al. 2004; Eby et al. 2008; Underhill 2006), has documented the benefits of mentoring relationships. The benefits of productive mentorship include: greater earnings (Murrell and Tangri 1999; Smith, Smith, and Markham 2000), career advancement (Scandura 1992), enhanced job satisfaction (Wallace 2001), and increased organizational commitment (Ashford and Saks 1996) together with reduced employee turnover (Laband and Lentz 1995; Viator and Scandura 1991). In addition to career rewards, proteges enjoy personal benefits through enhanced self-esteem (Fagenson 1994; Johnson 2007), positive work attitudes (Lankau and Scandura 2002), and increased motivation to seek out new experiences (Spencer 2007) and achievable goals (Ramaswami and Dreher 2007). Mentors stand to gain through the assistance on projects provided by proteges, reputational status for developing new talent within firms, and personal benefits of friendship, respect, and recognition for their senior status and expertise (Allen et al. 2004; Higgins and Thomas 2001; Kram 1985; Parise and Forret 2008). Much of the research literature targets the benefits of mentoring, yet substantial gaps remain in our understanding about who receives mentorship and the different ways they may benefit from such relationships. We set out to address several gaps in the literature. First, past work tends to overlook individual and contextual variables that may be relevant in understanding who becomes mentored (Burke and McKeen 1997; Ragins and McFarlin 1990). We examine whether career-oriented attitudes and personality characteristics of individuals attract potential mentors, as well as how specific organizational contexts facilitate mentoring relationships. Our analysis contributes to the mentor literature through an examination of the personality antecedents of mentoring and the moderating influence of organizational context-related variables on career outcomes. Understanding the differential receipt of mentoring and the conditions under which mentoring leads to its demonstrated outcomes constitute important avenues for extending our understanding of mentoring as a career development tool. Second, the majority of studies focus on a narrow set of extrinsic outcomes as indicators of the benefits of mentoring, typically earnings and promotions. We consider a broader scope of career outcomes, including both extrinsic and intrinsic rewards. This more inclusive range of career benefits represents the larger "package" of attributes highly prized by professionals (Koberg, Boss, and Goodman 1998; Ragins and Cotton 1999). Third, recent research suggests that having more than one mentor may be significantly more beneficial than having a sole mentor during one's career (de Janasz and Sullivan 2004; Higgins 2000; Higgins, Dobrow, and Chandler 2008). We empirically investigate whether there are in fact enhanced and diverse career benefits derived from having a constellation of mentors.