Magic bullets, mates or myths: who are the mentors?

To date, by far the bulk of mentoring literature reflects activity in intra-organisational and corporate environments. In 2000 it was estimated that over a third of the major U.S. corporations had established formal mentor programs (Nemanick, 2000). The rise of the mentor is often seen as coinciding with the rise of the human resource development movement and achieved prominence in the period 1975 - 1990 (Monaghan and Lunt, 1992) and interest in mentoring was significantly boosted with the introduction of equal employment opportunity legislation, when mentor programs were identified as a means of addressing opportunities for women and individuals in minority groups. The available literature is largely organisation-centric and portrays mentoring as the best (and sometimes worst) thing to happen in career development. The majority of references relate to formal mentoring programs. However, entrepreneurial research has, over time, identified a number of particular factors which are believed to contribute to entrepreneurial success. Of particular interest to this research is the reference to mentors. Gartner et al. (1992) identified one of the factors contributing to the likelihood of success of the entrepreneur was the amount of time and the intensity devoted to specific activities including finding mentors. Authors such as Hisrich (1989) and Timmons and Spinelli (2004) recommend entrepreneurs use mentors, advisors or form quasi-boards to gain valuable counsel and advice from outsiders. However few studies have examined the relationship of the mentor and the entrepreneur. Despite this, the concept of mentoring is increasingly applied to sources of assistance advocated for nascent entrepreneurs. A process of discovery continues to explore the concepts of mentors and mentoring to better understand the role of significant others in the process of new venture creation. This paper builds on previous exploration of data.