Mentoring in business and industry: the need for a phenomenological perspective

Determining the potential benefits of mentoring is confounded by the lack of clarity surrounding the definition of mentoring in business and industry. Key dimensions of mentoring that are affected by the way in which mentoring is defined are explored, including prevalence, outcomes, gender and formal/informal relationships. This definitional conundrum limits our ability to apply findings to practice and suggests the need for a different research focus—that of determining the essential attributes of mentoring across the various types of mentoring relationships found in business settings. Using a phenomenological approach to gain a deeper understanding of the mentoring experience will provide unique insights into the attributes that must be present for relationships to be perceived as mentoring in the business and industry context.