Evidence of Mentoring’s Effect on Implicit Knowledge Transfer and Accounting Firm Outcomes

• In Event: Breakfast with Roundtable Paper Discussions
  In Dialogue Session: Table 7

Abstract

The accounting literature has long analyzed whether and how mentoring relationships affect public accountants’ turnover intentions. We continue the contingency approach that Hall and Smith (2009) developed by examining the mediating effects of value congruence and organizational understanding on the mentoring – turnover intentions relation. Close, personal mentoring relationships allow the transfer of implicit information about the organization’s politics, people, and goals and values (Chao et al., 1992), which we proxy by using measures of value congruence and protégé understanding of organizational culture and political environment. We also examine the indirect effect of the quality of the mentoring relationship on self-reported job performance as value congruence and organizational understanding mediate. Analyzing data from 72 mentored accountants, we find that mentoring’s psychosocial aspects are associated with higher levels of perceived value congruence and with higher levels of supervisory satisfaction, which, in turn, is strongly associated with decreased turnover intentions. The direct effects of the mentoring variables on turnover intentions are insignificant statistically. Regarding job performance, we find the same relation between the mentoring variables, value congruence, and supervisory satisfaction. However, supervisory satisfaction does not directly impact job performance. Only organizational understanding is directly associated with higher levels of job performance and only the career development aspect of mentoring is associated with organizational understanding. We thus provide support for the efficacy of mentoring as an indirect means of increasing performance and reducing turnover through the transfer of implicit organizational information.

Authors

• Timothy J Fogarty, Case Western Reserve University

• Alan Reinstein, Wayne State University

• Rebekah Annette Heath, Middle Tennessee State University

• David H Sinason, Northern Illinois University

• Gerald H. Lander, University of South Florida-St. Petersburg