Learning to Produce Knowledge - the Contribution of Mentoring

This paper is a discussion of mentoring in the context of knowledge productivity in organisations. Links are made between the perspective of organisations as knowledge productive, the theory of situated learning and the developmental strategy of mentoring as a basis for arguing that mentoring has a distinctive contribution to make to organisations whose success is dependent upon being knowledge productive. Learning at work is conceptualised in terms of a corporate curriculum, an inclusive concept which recognises the diverse ways in which people learn in an organisational environment. In particular, learning in and through a mentoring relationship is viewed as contributing to a person's ability to be knowledge productive.