Intradepartmental Faculty Mentoring in Teaching Marketing

Abstract

Teaching continues to be less valued than research (e.g., Sharma, Albers-Miller, Pelton, & Straughan, 2006), even though a strong teaching performance also increases research productivity (Baxter Magdola, 1999; Stack, 2003), and despite constant calls to improve the quality of teaching in higher management education (see Schibrowsky, Peltier, & Boyt, 2002; Van Fleet & Peterson, 2005). Van Fleet and Peterson (2005) encourage the use of a peer-review process for teaching by involving peers from other academic departments or institutions to ensure the independence of any review. This echoes corporate mentoring, where mentors and mentees are usually from different departments. However, Kilburg and Hancock (2006) found problems arising when mentoring dyads did not share a field of interest or were situated in different buildings. Thus, they argue for the importance of the actors being from the same school. Harnish and Wild (1994) for their part suggest that discipline is not a significant factor influencing the success of peer mentoring in a college context. As research is evidently divided on the pros and cons of intradepartmental faculty mentoring, this study takes as its starting point the findings of the past three studies above to discuss the use of intradepartmental mentoring among marketing teachers. For the purpose of this study, we have modified the definition by Zellers, Howard, and Barcic (2008) and define intradepartmental faculty mentoring in teaching (FMIT) as reciprocal learning relationships characterized by trust, respect, and commitment, in which a mentor and a mentee share their experiences, emotions, and knowledge of teaching as peers. Although research on corporate mentoring (e.g., Boyatzis, Smith, & Blaize, 2006), mentoring students, and young people (e.g., Crisp & Cruz, 2009; Miller, 2002), and mentoring as a part of teacher training (e.g., Carver & Katz, 2004; Meijer, Zanting, & Verloop, 2002) is well established, a review by Zellers et al. (2008) criticizes faculty mentoring research for being of low quality and building on corporate mentoring research, despite few organizational parallels existing between academia and business. Clutterbuck and Lane (2004) and Sands, Parson, and Duane (1991) argue that faculty mentoring research lacks detailed descriptions of the mentoring relationships and the mentor's role, making generalizing very challenging. Research on faculty mentoring in teaching in the context of higher education is almost nonexistent. Exceptions are Harnish and Wild (1994) on peer mentoring and studies on peer observation of teaching (POT; e.g., Gosling, 2002; Millis, 1989), although POT lacks some of the essential elements of mentoring (see Table 1).

Benefits of a University Faculty-to-Faculty Mentoring Program

“…Wichita State mentees believed that the program provided a venue to safely discuss concerns that they had. Earlier research showed similar benefits for mentees in university settings (Benson et al, 2002;Tähtinen, Mainela, Nätti, & Saraniemi 2012;Wake Forest School of Medicine, 2015).…”

The Story Only Few Can Tell: Exploring the Disproportionately Gendered Professoriate in Business Schools

“…Intradepartmental mentoring can improve faculty retention, increase all types of performance, and lower the detrimental effects of rejection sensitivity (Day & Porter, 2017). A supportive mentoring environment requires organizational support (e.g., rewarding faculty who participate), a knowledge sharing environment (e.g., brown bag lunches or colloquiums), and an honest feedback process (e.g., periodic assessments by administrators and faculty mentors; Tähtinen, Mainela, Nätti, & Saraniemi, 2011).…”

Educating for the Sustainable Future: A Conceptual Process for Mapping the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in Marketing Teaching Using Bloom’s Taxonomy

“…This research followed the principles of self-ethnography, which has been utilized previously in marketing education and in a business school setting (Tähtinen et al, 2012). Self-ethnography is a method defined as “a study and a text in which the researcher-author describes a cultural setting to which s/he has a ‘natural access’, [and] is an active participant” (Alvesson, 2003, p. 174).…”