Leadership and mentorship

This thesis aims to learn more about mentoring relationships in organizations. Through detailed one on one interviews with mentors and mentees from a variety of different backgrounds, different age groups, genders, races, ethnicities and experiences, I develop a perspective on how mentoring relationships are structured and what met individuals expectations and what failed. The thesis then applies principles of system dynamics to understand the complexities of organizations. Applying the assumption that the demographics in the system are represented by demographics in Fortune 500 companies today, we analyze reinforcing and balancing loops within the system to understand why there is resistance to mentorship policy and why despite good intentions, many formal mentorship policies fail. I explore the case for mentorship through the value proposition of a mentorship relationship from the perspective of the mentor, mentee and the organization through responses collected from the interviews with mentors and mentee about why they enter into mentoring relationships and what motivates them to seek them out. The thesis uses system dynamics principles to understand mentoring policies and the barriers posed by the system.

Department dc:contributor.department

Sloan School of Management.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Taneja, Anishiya

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Neil A. Hartman.

• Sloan School of Management.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/39533

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/39533