دریافت مشاوره و شخصیت: مدارک و شواهد برای روابط غیر خطی

The research investigates the relationship of the Big-Five of personality with mentoring receipt with the use of two independent studies. The findings of the studies show substantial consistency. Equations of quadratic form describe half of the tested relationships better than linear equations. The association of openness to experience and agreeableness with mentoring receipt is of inverted U-shape. The benefits of being open and agreeable for mentoring receipt cease to exist at high values of these traits. On the other hand, emotional stability and conscientiousness demonstrate exclusively positive linear relationships with mentoring receipt. The form of the relationship of extraversion differs between the two studies, but the overall trend is positive. The substantial quadratic component in the association of personality with receipt of mentoring means that research hitherto may be grossly underestimating the effects of personality on developmental relationships because earlier studies assume strictly linear associations. Parts of the results also imply that the associations of certain personality traits with mentoring receipt may depend upon the occupational context.

Mentoring in the work place is a developmental relationship between two individuals, the mentor and the protégé. Within that relationship the mentor provides a variety of career-related (e.g., challenging assignments, exposure and visibility, and coaching) and socioemotional (e.g., friendship, counseling and role modeling) functions for the protégé (Kram, 1985). Substantial empirical research on mentoring in the past quarter of a century demonstrates its connection with outcomes that are of benefit to individuals, including career success of protégés (e.g., Allen, Eby, Poteet, Lentz, & Lima, 2004) or mentors (Allen et al., 2006 and Bozionelos, 2004a); firms, including work attitudes of protégés and mentors (e.g., Bozionelos et al., 2011, Dawley et al., 2009, Lentz and Allen, 2009 and Richard et al., 2009); or both individuals and organizations, as mentoring receipt relates to better learning results for protégés (Lankau & Scandura, 2002). Apart from outcomes, however, antecedents of mentoring are also important. For example, identification of individual characteristics that increase the likelihood of mentoring receipt can contribute towards advice and development programs to assist those with deficits in those features. Personality is an individual characteristic that deserves attention in this sense. Mentoring reflects interpersonal processes. Personality influences such processes (Wiggins & Trapnell, 1996) and, hence, personality traits must play a role in mentoring receipt (Tokar et al., 1998 and Turban and Lee, 2007). In particular, personality manifests itself through motives and behaviors (e.g., Winter, John, Stewart, Klohnen, & Duncan, 1998). These should affect receipt of mentoring both because of actions of protégés (e.g., actively approaching a mentor in order to enhance their own image or seeking the views of an existing mentor in order to satisfy their inquisitiveness) and because of actions of mentors towards protégés (e.g., an industrious employee may attract a mentor or a mentor may prefer to provide more advice to a receptive than to a non-receptive protégé). The idea that personality plays substantial part in interpersonal processes and outcomes, such as mentoring receipt, adheres to the dispositional perspective to organizational behavior (e.g., see Staw et al., 1986 and Staw and Cohen-Charash, 2005). The dispositional view asserts that enduring dispositional traits, such as personality, determine individual outcomes across situations and settings, and through time. With respect to the present theme, this means that individuals with similar personality profiles must show consistency across settings and over time in the extent to which they receive mentoring. Hence, information on one's personality can enable the informed prediction of whether this individual will develop mentoring relationships. However, despite the importance of the issue, empirical research on the link between mentoring receipt and personality is limited, as authors stress (Dougherty et al., 2007 and Turban and Lee, 2007). Most importantly, extant research, albeit certainly contributory, has two drawbacks. First, that research is inconsistent in utilization of personality framework. Existing studies utilize a variety of frameworks, including the instrumentality-expressiveness (Fagenson, 1989, Kirchmeyer, 2002 and Scandura and Ragins, 1993) and the needs model (Fagenson, 1992 and Fagenson-Eland and Baugh, 2001), isolated traits (Allen et al., 2009 and Wang et al., 2010) or collections of isolated traits (Aryee et al., 1999 and Turban and Dougherty, 1994). This hinders the extraction of parsimonious conclusions because of different degrees of compatibility between personality frameworks and overlap between their traits. For example, extant studies employ the traits of instrumentality, locus of control, Type A personality, need for power, and self-monitoring. These traits overlap in various degrees (e.g., Lippa and Connely, 1990 and Morrison, 1997). However, neither do these traits refer to the same construct, nor do they share the same characteristics, nor do they overlap to the same degree. Therefore, utilization of a single personality framework that contains mutually orthogonal traits and provides a comprehensive description of human personality will improve clarity and enhance understanding. Second, research so far investigates only relationships of linear nature between personality and mentoring receipt. However, the presence of curvilinear relationships is within reason. Ignoring the presence of curvilinearity can lead to erroneous conclusions over the nature and magnitude of associations (e.g., Iversen et al., 2010 and Trevor et al., 1997), and that includes associations between personality and its outcomes (Vasilopoulos, Cucina, & Hunter, 2007). These limitations suggest that additional investigations on the subject may be beneficial.

The research at hand focuses on the relationship of the Big-Five of personality with mentoring receipt. The results indicate that the Big-Five accounts for substantial variance in mentoring receipt over and above demographic, human capital and structural factors, with all Big-Five traits demonstrating links. In addition, the move from linear to quadratic equations brings considerable increase in the capacity of personality to explain variance. This means that the role of personality in mentoring is stronger and more complicated than what simple linear associations advise. The forms of the associations show substantial agreement between the two studies. This implies considerable generalizability across occupational and organizational contexts. Hence, the findings support the dispositional approach to organizational behavior because: (1) the Big-Five explains sizable variance in mentoring receipt over and above a host of personal, occupational and organizational demographics, and (2) the patterns of association show substantial congruence between the two studies, which represent different settings. Emotional stability demonstrates a remarkably consistent link with mentoring receipt across the two studies. The nature of the relationship indicates that in the whole of its spectrum higher levels of that trait constantly correspond to greater amounts of mentoring receipt. This means that qualities such as calmness, patience, confidence and a positive outlook of situations offer a continuous advantage in terms of receiving mentoring. Emotional stability is the only Big-Five trait within the construct of core self-evaluations, whose advocates view as a dispositional kernel that heavily influences the way individuals perceive themselves and their environment (Bono & Judge, 2003). The present findings, therefore, concur with the placement of emotional stability into a central spot in human disposition. Conscientiousness also has a linear relationship with mentoring receipt. However, this relationship appears only in one of the studies, albeit the one that utilizes the most structurally and occupationally heterogeneous sample and, hence, arguably bears most resemblance to the general working population. This means that in the general case increases in the strength of the trait convey an advantage in the mentoring receipt arena. On the other hand, the lack of relationship in the technically-oriented occupational context of the second study implies exceptions to the general case. Presumably tasks, procedures and quality specifications are more standardized within technically-oriented environments. Such standardization may suppress the effects of conscientiousness on job performance, thus rendering variance in conscientiousness among employees more difficult to discern. Indeed, some research suggests that conscientiousness does not relate to performance when tasks are technical and heavily prescribed (Mohammed, Mathieu, & Bartlett, 2002). This means that conscientious employees may be less distinguishable in such environments. That would reduce the likelihood for mentors to notice them and approach them as protégés. The fact that conscientiousness has the lowest variance among the Big-Five traits in the second study (where, to remind, peers assess the Big-Five) corroborates this tentative account. Openness and agreeableness demonstrate inverted U-shaped associations with mentoring receipt in both studies. For the greater part of their ranges increases in the strength of these traits augment the likelihood of receiving mentoring, but strong presence of the traits does not offer a mentoring advantage anymore and may in fact bring a handicap. This means that creativity, interest in learning and inquisitiveness on the one hand, and cooperativeness, trust, altruism and sensitivity on the other hand are for the most part helpful in obtaining a mentor and receiving mentoring functions. Extraversion also displays a relationship of overall positive trend with mentoring receipt. Apart from a limited range of scores near its negative pole (i.e., introversion) in one of the studies, increases in the strength of the trait accompany increases in amount of mentoring receipt. Hence, characteristics such as sociability, energy and action tendencies appear to provide a constant advantage in terms of mentor attraction and receiving mentoring functions. The slight discrepancy between the two studies with respect to extraversion may reflect the effects of context. The context of the second study is a technologically oriented occupational setting, where typical jobs involve the development and maintenance of various types of information systems. Jobs of that nature primarily demand ability to concentrate and maintain attention to the task, which fits introverts more than extraverts (e.g., see Beauducel et al., 2006 and Blumenthal, 2001). This may lead to filtering that renders most individuals in that occupational context low on extraversion. Indeed, in the second study extraversion has by far the lowest mean score of the Big-Five traits. Presuming that the characteristics of extraversion yield an advantage for an employee in terms of a mentor noticing him/her, this signifies that the effects of such characteristics become stronger in a low extraversion environment because in such an environment they are scarce. This explains the positive relationship of extraversion with mentoring receipt even near the low pole of the trait in the second study. On the other hand, in the setting of Study 1, which is presumably more representative of the general work environment, the relationship is negative in the vicinity of low extraversion. As seen, this is may be the outcome of introvert's very strong preference for developing intense exclusive relationships. Of course, this is a tentative account that needs testing. 7.1. Limitations The Big-Five is remarkably stable during adulthood (Judge et al., 1999), which justifies the assignment of cause to personality traits and of effect to mentoring receipt when applying the criterion of temporal stability. According to this criterion, more temporally stable variables are normally causes while less temporally stable factors are normally effects (Davis, 1985). This offers some confidence about causality despite the cross-sectional design. The research has taken precautions against common method bias: ensuring anonymity, using temporal separation in the completion of questionnaires of personality and mentoring, and offering the option of feedback on personality (e.g., see Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Lee, & Podsakoff, 2003). Furthermore, the second study utilizes multi-source measurement. In addition, the mentoring scale is immune to social desirability, a potential source of common method effects (Podsakoff et al., 2003). Therefore, the possibility for presence of common method variance in the findings is rather low. The issue of common method bias deserves some more consideration because of substantial attention in recent years; which has led to automatic attribution of inferior quality status to research that employs exclusively self-report measures. This is despite that empirical and quantitative review research (Crampton and Wagner, 1994 and Malhotra et al., 2006) concludes that common method bias is an overstated threat to validity. In the second study, which utilizes peer assessments of personality, the Big-Five accounts for much greater amounts of variance than in the first study, which utilizes self-reports. Considering that the measurement of mentoring is common in the two studies two explanations ensue: (1) indeed common method bias is not as serious an issue as assumed to be; (2) adoption of simple measures, such as careful choice or development of instruments, separate measurement of core variables, and offering feedback, are very effective means against common method bias. In either case, the present research contributes towards the counter-argument (e.g., see Spector, 2006) that the attention paid to common method bias is disproportional to the real threat. Responses to the mentoring measure represent participants' own perceptions, which may not be accurate (Welsh, Bhave, & Kim, 2012). Nevertheless, empirical research suggests substantial agreement between protégés and mentors in the amount of mentoring that flows within the relationship (Waters, McCabe, Kiellerup, & Kiellerup, 2002). In addition, for certain mentoring functions, such as socioemotional functions, perceptions of protégés are probably more accurate than perceptions of mentors (see Waters et al., 2002). Hence, self-report measures may represent the most valid method for assessing receipt of mentoring. 7.2. Directions The substantial consistency of the findings of the two studies, in line with the dispositional approach, suggests that the way Big-Five traits relate to mentoring receipt largely generalize across contexts. Nevertheless, inter-study consistency is not perfect, and as seen in detail above, the occupational setting may moderate some relationships. Therefore, future research must investigate for occupational and organizational moderators. In addition, individual characteristics may also affect the pattern of certain relationships. Self-monitoring (Snyder, 1974) is such a characteristic. Self-monitoring reflects the extent to which individuals carefully monitor and modify their behavior according to social cues in order to project favorable public image. High self-monitors may sense in the behavior of their mentors or potential mentors the negative impressions excessive display of acts associated with openness and agreeableness create, and may suppress or manage pertinent behaviors accordingly. This means that for high self-monitors the relationship of these traits with mentoring receipt may not include a bending point (i.e., the relationship is linear and positive) while for low self-monitors the inverted-U-shape curvature is more pronounced. The universality of the Big-Five does not mean that its traits relate in the same way with work and other outcomes across cultures (McCrae and Costa, 1997 and Van Emmerik et al., 2010). Therefore, research in other cultural clusters, or even in other countries of the Anglo-Saxon cluster, is advisable. For example, the British society, like those of other individualistic English-speaking and West-European countries, values and encourages autonomous and independent thinking over conformism and obedience (Schwartz, 2006). On the other hand, Confucian and South Asian societies endorse conformism and compliance over intellectual and emotional autonomy (e.g., Bond and Smith, 1986 and Schwartz, 2006). This may mean that openness does not relate in the same way to mentoring receipt in those societies because superiors may not appreciate openness-related behaviors from their subordinates. As another example, high neutrality is a characteristic of British culture. A neutral culture, as opposed to an affective culture, signifies non-appreciation and discouragement of overt expression of felt emotions (Trompenaars, 1993). This invites the possibility that those Big-Five traits that pertain to experience and expression of emotions, like emotional stability and extraversion (e.g., Watson & Clark, 1992), relate more strongly with mentoring receipt in affective cultures. The present era of globalization has brought an unprecedented movement of individuals across national borders. The extent to which personality traits have consistency in their relationships with mentoring receipt across cultures has essence for those who move across national boundaries (see also Baruch & Bozionelos, 2010). Research in various national settings will contribute towards the development of pertinent advice for individuals and organizational agents alike. The exclusive focus on traditional informal mentoring represents a conscious, validity enhancing, choice. Nevertheless, the relationship of the Big-Five with mentoring receipt demands investigation within formal and non-traditional (e.g., lateral mentoring, which takes place between peers) mentoring relationships as well. Non-traditional developmental relationships, like peer-mentoring (e.g., McManus & Russell, 2007), acquire special importance these days due to flattening of organizations, stretching of the workforce, and employment uncertainty. These phenomena reduce the amount of time managers can dedicate to subordinates and suppress their motivation to provide mentoring (Allen et al., 1997). The dynamics of lateral and traditional mentoring are dissimilar (e.g., less power differential), hence, the effects of personality may also differ. Finally, the implications of the present research extend beyond the domain of mentoring. Although many critical workplace outcomes clearly relate to personality, authors pose questions on its substantive contribution, invoking rather weak relationships with key outcomes (e.g., Hurtz & Donovan, 2000). However, extant research on correlates of personality mostly assumes and tests linear associations. The present findings imply that the contribution of personality is substantially stronger and more complicated than currently believed because non-linear relationships appear at play. This adds to calls and emerging literature (e.g., Vasilopoulos et al., 2007) on the curvilinear perspective to the association of personality with work processes and outcomes, which opens a new horizon that future research ought to explore.