Purpose -This study aims to examine the relationships among leader-member exchange (LMX), innovative work behaviour (IWB), and intention to quit. The mediating role of work engagement is tested within the relationship of LMX, IWB, and intention to quit. Design/methodology/approach -Respondents to a survey were 979 Indian managerial employees working in six service sector organisations in India. Structural equation modelling was used to test hypothesised relationships. Findings -Results suggest quality of exchanges between employees and their immediate supervisors influences engagement. Work engagement correlates positively with innovative work behaviour and negatively with intention to quit. Work engagement mediates the relationship between LMX and innovative work behaviour, and partially mediates intention to quit. Research limitations/implications -A cross-sectional design and use of self-reported questionnaire data is a limitation of this study. Since the study focuses only on service-sector organisations, the results of this study should be interpreted with caution. Originality/value -This study makes important theoretical contributions in three ways. In the domain of work engagement, it addresses factors that influence employee engagement and its outcomes. It expands knowledge about organisational resources that foster work engagement. For LMX, this study complements existing research by investigating work engagement as an outcome. Identifying LMX and work engagement as antecedents of innovative work behaviour, it also extends research in that domain. An important contribution is positioning work engagement as a means through which job resources are linked to employee outcomes. The study is also a rare examination of the Indian context.

This study examined the extent to which science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) students reported having had mentors of their own race and gender and the extent to which they have adopted the idea that matching by race and gender matters. The study also documented the effects of race and gender matching on three academic outcomes, self-reported grade point average, efficacy, and confidence, based on data collected from 1,013 undergraduate and graduate students and postdoctoral scholars actively participating in MentorNet's online community. Analyses indicated that having a mentor of one's own gender or race was felt to be important by many students, especially women and students of Color. Students who had a mentor of their own gender or race reported receiving more help, but matching by race or gender did not affect academic outcomes. Key findings are discussed in terms of implications for future research and mentoring in the STEM fields.

Using a survey of women science majors, we tested the assumption that women mentors and other women guides help women students pursue the sciences. The survey explicitly distinguished among three types of guides: mentors (who provide psychosocial support), sponsors (who provide instrumental support), and role models (who act as examples) encountered before and during college. We found that over 90% of the women had a guide of one type or another, that mentors were most influential to women's pursuit of science, and that guides during college were more influential than guides prior to college. Participants reported having more female than male guides overall, but that some of the most influential guides were men.

Our research explores the idea that formal mentoring relationships that cut across traditional organizational boundaries may facilitate positive interactions among an increasingly diverse workforce. We present interview, Web‐survey, and focus‐group data across an eight‐month period from a pilot test of an interorganizational formal mentoring (IOFM) program sponsored by the Executive Leadership Council (ELC). Results indicate that IOFM provides valuable access to mentoring relationships that include trust and psychosocial support, access to legitimate organizational power, and the sharing of social capital across traditional organizational boundaries. The benefits and challenges of this approach to mentoring and diversity are examined. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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