Dr Judie Gannon

How can the UK’s creative industries become better, more responsible employers in the face of continual challenges including endemic precarity, the Covid-19 pandemic and the cost of living crisis? What roles can mentoring play? Several studies have demonstrated the value of mentoring within creative enterprises in relation to both personal career development and increasing equitable access to creative occupations (Grugulis and Stoyanova, 2012; NESTA, 2014). However, these accounts offer only a limited depiction of the huge variety of mentoring practice which exists across the variegated set of industries which constitute the UK's creative sector. This article draws upon survey data generated in 2022 by an interdisciplinary research project which was supported by an industry policy body. We examine mentoring as a set of developmental, helping relationships (Desimone, et al., 2014), primarily at the formal initiative level across all sectors of the creative industries in the UK. Our investigation offers a new understanding of the nature of mentoring programme provision and the challenges the creative industries face in developing sustainable mentoring programmes since the Covid-19 pandemic. The findings indicate that while many mentoring initiatives are instigated to tackle the barriers of inequality for new entrants and existing employees, their outcomes are often compromised by sectoral precarity in the creative industries.

The rise and development of coaching and mentoring in recent decades has led to a plethora of debates around their theoretical and disciplinary roots. Alongside these debates are deliberations about the role of coaching and mentoring in contemporary threats, such as the financial crisis, climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as wider societal issues of inequality and disadvantage, and empowerment and democratization. In this theoretical paper, I draw on theories and ideas from the field of social movements to explore coaching and mentoring, and their deployment in relation to these contemporary societal, economic and political threats.  By exploring key conceptualizations and themes from social movement theory, as well as the classification of social movements, it is possible to reflect on the maturity of coaching and mentoring and its potential to deliver social change. Such insights offer exciting and thought-provoking insights for coaching and mentoring practitioners, commissioners, professional bodies, trainers and educators, mentees and coachees as well as social movements.

Keywords: coaching, mentoring, social movement theory, social change, challenge, networks

Female leadership development has become a key issue in organisations' strategy to ensure equal representation of male and female leaders throughout organisations, including top management. This article investigates the deployment of a combined programme of executive and group coaching to support female leader development in a multinational. Drawing on the experiences of key stakeholders: clients, coaches and the programme team using a case study approach, it offers a rich depiction of this novel use of dual forms of coaching. The findings and discussion identify the personal value of individual executive coaching, the collective value of group coaching and the synergies achieved from the interplay of the simultaneous use of both forms of coaching within the organisation, and beyond. These findings have theoretical and practical implications for our understanding of coaching as a social process, the effect of combining coaching approaches, and female leader development, emphasising the need for further research on coaching as a social process as part of leadership development.

Mentoring is often identified as a flexible practice that supports the socialisation of newcomers. Within international organisations high levels of managerial mobility creates specific issues in relation to expectations of serial socialisation. This article explores the forms of mentoring which Human Resource Management (HRM) executives’ advocate to help socialise managers in an international industry. In-depth interviews were utilised to identify the ways in which mentoring is used formally and informally to support the socialisation of managerial resources. The results highlight the contribution mentoring can make as part of the recurrent socialisation managers face, in particular where international companies require high levels of mobility. The implications for HRM practitioners and other executives are evident in the capacity formal and informal mentoring has to abet frequent socialisation, enhance managers’ professional networks and act as organisational glue. Further research is warranted on the exact mentoring experiences which managers themselves value in their international careers and the extent to which organisations can capitalise on mentoring interventions. 

Given the challenges of developing inter-culturally competent, digitally literate, team players amidst a realm of other postgraduate competencies this paper outlines the initiative developed by academic teams from three European institutions. The paper outlines the virtual intercultural collaboration and its development and then reports on the results of a survey conducted with participating students from two years of the initiative. Students' perceptions of the generic value of specific skills sets in virtual team working and intercultural competence are identified as well as their views of the specific project's capacity to develop their own skills in the relevant areas, are explored. The results suggest that since social media, team work and intercultural interactions seem to be ever present dimensions of the contemporary world of work it appears to be important that students encounter meaningful virtual and intercultural learning opportunities during their postgraduate management studies. Finally this paper highlights the value of inter-programme teaching and learning collaborative activities between European higher education institutions.

Purpose - Coaching and mentoring have emerged as important interventions as the role of helping relationships have gained prominence in human resource development. However, there appear to be contexts where one or other is preeminent, without consistent explanation of their suitability. Such inconsistency arguably creates confusion and doubt about these interventions and their efficacy notably amongst those who commission such interventions and their potential beneficiaries. This study focuses on this inconsistency of coaching or mentoring by exploring practitioners’ approaches within six disciplines: executive coaches, coaching psychologists, sports coaches, mentors of leaders, mentors of newly qualified teachers and mentors of young people, with the aim of assisting those seeking support with development.

Design/methodology/approach – This exploratory study was undertaken using a qualitative methodology where in-depth interviews were completed with experienced practitioners to elucidate their approaches and practice.

Findings - The findings show that approaches may be discipline-specific where practitioners specialise in a particular type of coaching or mentoring requiring distinctive knowledge and/or skills. However, the sharing of good practice across disciplines and the value of understanding the common dimensions which emerged is also evident, providing clients and those who commission coaching and mentoring with reassurances regarding the nature of these helping relationships.

Research limitations/implications – As the research focused only upon the practitioners’ experiences of their work in these disciplines, it is vital that the mentees’ and coachees’ experiences are captured in future research. There is also value in further exploration of the model developed.

Practical implications – By deploying the model concerned the future development of these interventions suggests practitioners can expand their capacity and scope by adopting interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches.

Originality/value – By directly exploring the shared and distinctive approaches of coaching and mentoring practitioners in six contexts this study provides opportunities to understand where practitioners can benefit from imparting best practice across these interventions and highlighting specific aspects for their context.

Keywords Coaching, Mentoring, directive/non-directive approaches, deficit/developmental mind-sets

Paper type Research paper

In the strategic human resource management (SHRM) field three approaches have dominated, namely, the universal or best-practice, best-fit or contingency and resource-based view (RBV). This study investigates evidence for the simultaneous or mixed adoption of these approaches by eight case study firms in the international hotel industry. Findings suggest there is considerable evidence of the combined use of the first two approaches but that the SHRM RBV approach was difficult to achieve by all companies. Overall, gaining differentiation through SHRM practices was found to be challenging due to specific industry forces. The study identifies that where companies derive some competitive advantage from their human resources and HRM practices they have closely aligned their managers’ expertise with their corporate market entry mode expertise and developed some distinctive, complex and integrated HRM interventions, which have a mutually reinforcing effect.

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to explore the value of an alumni and employer engagement mentoring initiative in a hospitality and tourism school within a UK university.

Design/methodology/approach

– The paper uses the survey method and interviews to provide qualitative and quantitative data on the participants’ reactions to the initiative.

Findings

– The main components of successful mentoring programmes; matching, preparation, interaction and evaluation are explored to help identify the long‐ and short‐term challenges and benefits of mentoring students as they transition into the graduate labour market. The findings highlight the benefits to mentors and mentees and the challenges for ensuring participant engagement and ongoing development. The article concludes with an agenda for further mentoring developments in the midst of the dynamic challenges facing UK higher education institutions and the hospitality and tourism industry.

Practical implications

– The article highlights the importance of a systematic approach to developing a mentoring programme and engaging industry in a distinctive way with the transitioning of undergraduates into the workplace.

Originality/value

– This article offers unique evidence of an employer engagement initiative aimed at supporting sector specific management graduates as they transition from university into industry.

Purpose. This article aims to explore how understanding the challenges faced by companies' attempts to create competitive advantage through their human resources and HRM practices can be enhanced by insights into the concept of strategic groups within industries. Based within the international hotel industry, this study identifies how strategic groups emerge in the analysis of HRM practices and approaches. It sheds light on the value of strategic groups as a way of readdressing the focus on firm and industry level analyses. Design/methodology/approach. Senior human resource executives and their teams across eight international hotel companies (IHCs) were interviewed in corporate and regional headquarters, with observations and the collection of company documentation complementing the interviews. Findings. The findings demonstrate that strategic groups emerge from analysis of the HRM practices and strategies used to develop hotel general managers (HGMs) as strategic human resources in the international hotel industry. The value of understanding industry structures and dynamics and intermediary levels of analysis are apparent where specific industries place occupational constraints on their managerial resources and limit the range of strategies and expansion modes companies can adopt. Research limitations/implications. This study indicates that further research on strategic groups will enhance the theoretical understanding of strategic human resource management and specifically the forces that act to constrain the achievement of competitive advantage through human resources. A limitation of this study is the dependence on the human resource divisions' perspectives on realising international expansion ambitions in the hotel industry. Practical implications. This study has implications for companies' engagement with their executives' perceptions of opportunities and threats, and suggests companies will struggle to achieve competitive advantage where such perceptions are consistent with their competitors. Originality/value. Developments in strategic human resource management have relied on the conceptual and theoretical developments in strategic management, however, an understanding of the impact of strategic groups and their shaping of SHRM has not been previously explored.