The impact of race on managers' experiences of developmental relationships (mentoring and sponsorship): An intra‐organizational study

Abstract

This study examines the influence of race on protCgCs' experiences of forming developmental relationships. Data were collected from 88 black and 107 white managers, who, collectively, accounted for 487 developmental relationships. The results indicate that white prottges have almost no developmental relationships with persons of another race. Black prottgts, however, form 63 per cent of their developmental relationships with whites. Blacks are more likely than whites to form relationships outside the formal lines of authority and outside their departments. Furthermore, same-race relationships were found to provide significantly more psychosocial support than cross-race relationships.

Organizational Demography and Individual Careers: Structure, Norms, and Outcomes

“…Although this hiring pattern may result, in part, from a university's willingness to make offers to women, it may also result from a greater propensity by women to accept offers from these universities, because they view them as having more promising career opportunities. These studies support the argument that individuals do take the distribution of demographic attributes in organizations as signals of their own opportunities for career advancement (see also Thomas, 1990). If their perceptions of these distributions are wrong, their perceptions of the opportunity structure will also be inaccurate.…”

Friends in High Places: The Effects of Social Networks on Discrimination in Salary Negotiations

“…Perhaps minorities' biggest constraint is having available fewer people of the same race with whom they can form ties, presenting a structural impediment to the formation of same-race ties. Because same-race ties are likely to be stronger than cross-race ties (Tsui and O'Reilly, 1989; Thomas, 1990), racial minorities are likely to have fewer strong ties within their organization than Whites (Ibarra, 1993(Ibarra, , 1995. To compensate for the relatively low support provided by the predominantly cross-race ties within their own organization, members of minority groups may seek supportive relationships with same-identity-group members from other organizations (Thomas and Alderfer, 1989; Thomas and Higgins, 1996).…”

“…To compensate for the relatively low support provided by the predominantly cross-race ties within their own organization, members of minority groups may seek supportive relationships with same-identity-group members from other organizations (Thomas and Alderfer, 1989; Thomas and Higgins, 1996). This may lead minority group members to have a relatively high number of extraorganizational relationships (Thomas, 1990;Ibarra, 1995), but within any single firm minorities face the same network constraint of limited opportunities for same-race ties as within their own organization. That is, minority job candidates, on average, are less likely than their White counterparts to have a preexisting social tie to any one firm that has a job opening.…”

Género y nueva economía: ¿se romperá el techo de cristal?

“…Hay estudios empíricos que indican que el grado de acceso a dicha información interna determina en parte los resultados del proceso de negociación de cambio de directivos (Brodt, 1994). Lo que ocurre es que, en este sentido, la evidencia empírica de las redes sociales indica también que la gente que comparte rasgos comunes de género y/o raza tiende a establecer lazos informales más estrechos que las personas que no comparten esos rasgos comunes (Thomas, 1990). Por eso, y aunque el mercado de trabajo de los altos directivos está aún controlado por unas pocas empresas consultoras en las que trabajan mayoritariamente hombres y cuyas bases de datos infrarepresentan a las mujeres (Judge et al,1995), en la medida que está aumentando el porcentaje de mujeres en el empleo de alta tecnología, planteamos la siguiente hipótesis:…”