Abstract
This issue of IJEBCM coincides with a change of publishing platform. The move to RADAR (Oxford Brookes’ Research Archive and Digital Asset Repository) will, we hope, enable us to enhance the journal's digital security as well as achieving even more recognition and impact.
The eleven papers in this issue reflect the very wide range of contexts in which coaching and mentoring exist. We have nine peer reviewed papers, three focusing on mentoring, six on coaching and two practically oriented coaching papers in our ‘Views from the Field’ section. As ever, our authors are from across the world: the USA features strongly in this issue, but we also feature researchers from Australia, New Zealand, UK, Canada, German, Croatia and other parts of Europe.
Peer Reviewed Papers
We begin the issue with our three mentoring papers. The first is from colleagues working at Massey University in New Zealand. Vasudha Bhide and Beth Tootell focus on the perceptions of sponsoring as a career advancement tool for women. Their qualitative study actually examines perceptions of sponsoring in Europe and the findings expose how sponsoring is understood and valued by the participants in comparison with mentoring.
Our second paper, is a quantitative study exploring the effect of value similarity on mentoring relationships. Here, Marcy Young Illies and Roni Reiter-Palmon from the USA describe a survey in which 146 protégés answered questions on how value similarity affects mentoring success (including career support, psychosocial support, and satisfaction with the mentor) and organizational outcomes (organizational commitment, career success, and job satisfaction). The findings suggest protégés who perceive their values to be similar to those of their mentor had more mentoring success.
The third mentoring paper is by Stephen Bear, from Fairleigh Dickinson University, also in the US. His paper examines learning for matched pairs of mentors and protégés participating in a formal workplace mentoring program in the United States. Findings reveal protégé learning was positively related to protégé affective trust and the amount of mentoring received by the protégé. In turn, mentor learning was positively related to mentor affective trust and protégé perceived organizational support.
We also have six coaching focused articles and again these reflect the diversity of application of coaching. In the first of these coaching papers Elizabeth Hall and Don Morrow. working in Canada, use a constructivist grounded theory methodology to explore motivational interviewingvia-co-active life coaching as a possible behaviour intervention for adolescents who experience stressors in their lives. The findings indicate that the coaching relationship is critical to the adolescent and is apparent through four emerging concepts: “empowering self,” “shoring up purpose,” “creating connections” and “envisioning the future.”
Our next paper focuses on parental perceptions of coaching. Kimberly Allen from North Carolina State University uses mixed methods to explore parental knowledge of and opinions of family life coaching as a way to help deal with parenting issues across the life course. Findings suggest that parents support the idea of hiring a family life coach or coaching professional to assist in meeting their goals.
Colleagues from the University of Wollongong in Australia and University of Ghent in Belgium have explored the application of a coaching program to facilitate volitional personality change. Jonathan Allan, Peter Leeson, Filip De Fruyt and Sue Martin explore the outcomes of a 10 week coaching program and also explored the impact of targeting specific personality facets on change. The results of the study show that the program resulted in increases in participant's conscientiousness and extraversion and decreases in neuroticism. Changes were also maintained post-intervention.
Our next paper reports on findings from the European Employ ID project which is aimed at empowering public employment service (PES) practitioners via peer facilitation and coaching. Research into the blended learning approach trialled in PES Croatia showed that learners profited through greater knowledge and skills related to peer coaching and an increase of activities related to collaborative, reflective learning.
Charlotte Brown and Julia Yates, from London, UK, present a phenomenological study concerned with understanding the experience of midlife women taking part in a work-life balance career coaching programme. The research involved five female participants, taking part in a career coaching programme designed to improve work-life balance. Analysis suggests the programme offered a safe place to support women in reconciling work and life roles with their individual values and needs.
Our final coaching paper looks at ethics in coaching. Eve Turner and Jonathan Passmore, both working in the UK, examine ethical dilemmas and tricky decision-making based on results from an international online survey of 101 coaching supervisors. The research suggests ethical decisionmaking is an under-developed area. Findings reveal alternative perspectives on coach confidentiality, the circumstances in which confidentiality can be breached and what guidance supervisors provide to their coaches. The paper concludes with a recommendation for increased focus on ethics in the training and development of coaches and supervisors.
Views from the field
The first of our practitioner ‘views from the field’ is a fascinating case study by Yvette Ramos Volz. ‘Living Life in the Meantime’ is explained as an arts-based coaching model offering an alternative method of managing personal and professional change. This coaching model encourages selfreflection and expression through a process of building a leaded stained-glass window and the creation of a personalised map to manage the effects of change and the accompanying emotions.
Our second and final practitioner paper focuses on oganisational coaching outcomes by making a comparison between practitioner survey and key findings from the literature. Colleagues at Lewis University in the USA and Corporate Edge Inc. compare research from existing studies with a customer satisfaction survey measuring executive and leadership coaching effectiveness. Findings provide insights into the value, ROI and impact of executive and leadership coaching.