The role of manager's gender in mentoring: Evidence in the United Kingdom

Abstract

This article studies the role of managers' gender as a determinant of mentoring relationships between managers and employees in British firms by using data collected from the 2004 and 2011 Workplace Employment Relations Survey. Past literature suggests a rather mixed figure with datasets collected from either one point in time or in a single firm. Using longitudinal data collected from hundreds of British firms, this study shows that the results are inconsistent between classical pooled ordinary least squares (POLS) and fixed effects (FEs) regression models. The significant associations found in POLS regressions disappeared when firm FEs are included. This finding should encourage researchers to go beyond gender differences in mentoring relationships which often are the results of conventional stereotyping.