Page 3 - Thesis

Study 1: Scale development
Study 1 had the aim to develop a valid and
reliable measure of ethics-related mentoring,
and was formed of two main stages.
1) Interviews: From October to
December 2015, semistructured interviews
have been conducted (12 mentors, 9 protégés,
4 mentoring experts). Interviewees, located in
Germany, were asked to think about a specific
mentor from their experience whom they
could use as a reference point when answer-
ing the questions, e.g.:
• What made him or her an ethical mentor?
• What traits, visible actions and behaviours
are important to demonstrate ethics-related
mentoring?
• Think of a time recently in your role as a
mentor when you demonstrated ethics-relat-
ed mentoring?
• What questions, issues, or problems did you
bring to your mentor for advice that had
salient ethical implications?
It should be noted that the focus was on iden-
tifying ethical mentoring as a process/activity
– as opposed to what an ethical mentor (as a
person) looks like. Selected statements from
the interviews can be found in the right
column.
These interviews were used to generate an
initial item pool of 99 items. 6 subject matter
experts were exposed to these items and were
asked to judge the degree to which these
items were representative of the conceptual
definition of ethics-related mentoring (see
page 3, right column). The pool was further
refined to 40 items.
Research Aims
“Compliance is an issue. Let’s take as an example the case
of money laundering in the banking sector. If I were to find
that my protégé works in such gray areas, I would not
immediately run to the lawyer and inform against this
person. Maybe, it would be my duty to do that. I would
rather try to bring in my perspective and say: ‘Watch what
you are doing!’. If someone would work wittingly in this grey
area in order to take an advantage, then I would have a
problem with that. Then, I could also imagine that I say:
‘Watch out! At this point, it is no longer my task to show
you the way but to draw the consequences’. If someone has
gotten into this position through thoughtless action, I
would try to find a way – if I realise that he feels uncom-
fortable”.
(Male mentor)
“Sometimes, I have to make decisions in which I need to
include ethical calculus [...]. My mentor, she is interim
manager, is often faced with, I'd say, companies that strug-
gle in a financial emergency. And I said to myself, ok, I also
have to do with that every day because I often make
decisions regarding critical risks. And that is, of course,
always a question. From a banking perspective, you say to
yourself: ‘I have invested in this company, and I have to pull
the plug’ ... because you come eventually to the point
where you say: ‘When you further invest more money, it
does not result that the company does not go broke’. And to
find the right bounce is sometimes an ethical and moral
issue. Because you also know ... there are jobs behind ...
there’s an entrepreneurial idea behind ... there is a dynasty
behind. And that, of course, are things where my mentor
and I have found common topics”.
(Male protégé)
“If attitude is a working method to practice ethics, then one
can say that mentors do that. In other words: They point
out what worked out well, and what did not work out well.
They talk about defeats, about slips, about right or wrong,
about evaluation criteria, about danger, about risk, about
resources. Today, ethics has changed. We are more
resource-oriented. These are things that many mentors
affect because they are leaders [...]. Every day, they have to
put their neck on the line for something, in fact actively:
‘Yes, I am the boss and yes, we go in this direction, from my
point of view. That’s why I get punches, I know, but I have
an attitude, and I stick to it.’ Hence, they act as a role model
– both for the protégé and for their employees”.
(Mentoring expert)