The mentor and the entrepreneur: a study of mentors and mentoring through the lens of entrepreneurs

It has been estimated that in excess of 1,000 publications on the topic of mentoring have been produced in the last 25years (Baugh & Fagenson-Eland, 2007) with the concentration of that work being in the three primary areas of youth, student-faculty, and workplace mentoring, and with the greatest proportion of that literature having its origins in the United States of America (Allen & Eby, 2007). However, despite the popularity of the topic and the use of the terms ‘mentor’ and ‘mentoring’ being increasingly transposed to the world of the entrepreneur, particularly with regard to support provided to entrepreneurs through programs aimed at business development, little research has examined the concept from the entrepreneurs’ standpoint. This thesis reports an exploratory study into the nature of mentors and mentoring, viewed through the lens of the entrepreneur. The research approach involved in-depth interviews supported by an embedded survey, with 32 founder owner-managers of small or medium sized enterprises based in the US, Canada, UK, or Australia. The interviews, being the stories of the entrepreneurs, were fully transcribed and NVivo7 software utilised to organise and interrogate the data. Analysis of the stories identified the sources of assistance for the entrepreneurs and, from those sources, who or what was designated a mentor and the nature of the mentoring provided. The findings revealed that the term ‘mentor’ was not freely used or lightly applied by the entrepreneurs in this study. Of particular note was the finding that only three of the eight Australian entrepreneurs elected to designate a mentor, suggesting the need for further research into cultural meaning of the term. Five clusters of mentoring contributions made by the mentors were identified and named confirming, corporeal, experiential, attributional, and affinial. Whilst there were similarities with descriptions of mentoring in the literature, there were also subtle differences; in particular, the attributional and affinial clusters emerged to be points of difference as was the transactional nature of the activity. Two particular characteristics of the entrepreneurs also emerged, namely reciprocity and the ability to communicate and ask for help. When these findings were combined with the survey data, the nature of mentoring received from mentors and other sources of assistance could be identified for each entrepreneur.