Author Reflections on Intraorganizational Developmental Networks
In this post, Andrew Dhaenens, a lecturer in the School of Management & Governance at the University of New South Wales Sydney, reflects on the paper “Proximal and Distal Career Benefits of Providing Mentoring in Intraorganizational Developmental Networks” which appeared in the journal Group and Organizational Management. Dhaenens was lead author of the paper written with James M. Vardaman of the University of Memphis, Bryan L. Rogers of East Carolina University, and David G. Allen of Texas Christian University. The reflection appears below the paper’s abstract
With this research, we offer a fresh way to view organizations as a “collective series of developmental relationships” where mentoring takes place. We are really excited about this work because it promotes the concept of intraorganizational developmental networks the corresponding study of centrality and career benefits within this intraorganizational network.
Within your developmental network are all of the individuals who take an active interest and involvement in your career. In today’s fast-paced careers with shorter tenures and new ways of working (e.g., hybrid work, flexible work), employee socialization and development needs have become expedited. For these reasons, employees typically exchange mentoring with multiple individuals in the organization. In other words, we will take an active interest and involvement in the careers of others to accomplish our goals and promote our daily work, and others to the same for us. Thus, developmental networks continue to be an important part of the future of work.
This has led to lots of research attention and new areas of study on collective approaches like developmental networks, but most of this work has focused on individuals and whether they have this network of support rather than their activity within the overall system of mentoring taking place in the organization. This is where we add to the field.
In order for us to study centrality in the developmental network and career benefits, we needed to take on the challenge of reconciling a social network perspective with how some of the mentoring and developmental network literature has grown. This is where we gained the concept of intraorganizational developmental network centrality.
In this study of architectural supplies manufacturer, we provide promising evidence that by providing mentoring to others and being both active and central in intraorganizational developmental networks leads to many career benefits that are valuable in today’s careers: satisfaction, learning, marketability, and retention. As mentoring can take considerable time and effort for individuals, research that demonstrates these benefits is valuable considering how valuable mentoring (and these benefits) can be to the overall success of the organization.
In the overall conclusion of this article, we show that being more active and central in the overall network is most beneficial to employees promoting the idea that you should actively work to support others and develop their careers. Collectively, organizations can promote their culture by encouraging everyone in the organization to provide mentoring and support the careers of others to improve employee outcomes.
All in all, we are excited to share this research with the community and readers of Group & Organization Management. In terms of future study, we very much want to encourage others to explore some different career outcomes in terms of intraorganizational developmental networks as we know our work on these important relationships should be a refreshed start as we all work toward better work and workplaces.
