Leadership styles, mentoring functions received, and job-related stress

LEADERSHIP, MENTORING AND STRESS 383
Second, Senge (1996) argues that to be competitive in the next millennium, an organization's
intellectual capital (i.e., knowledge resources and learning structures) should be mentored by
leaders who possess wisdom. Given that charisma can be de®ned in terms of wisdom (DiTomaso,
1993), our results suggest that mentors should focus on exhibiting idealized in¯uence and
inspirational motivation to build e€ective mentoring relationships. Both idealized in¯uence
and inspirational motivation represent charismatic leadership, a relationship in which followers
form a strong emotional attachment to the leader based on common internalized values and
identi®cation with the leader (Bass, 1985; House, 1996). To the extent that psychosocial support
involves mentor±prote ge value congruence, prote ge respect and emulation of the mentor, and
mentor emotional encouragement of the prote ge (Kram, 1985; Thibodeaux and Lowe, 1996),
study ®ndings suggest that idealized in¯uence and inspirational motivation may be useful
behaviors for promoting mentoring e€ectiveness.
Third, given increased levels of job-related stress experienced by organizational members
(Brockner et al., 1992), organizations should implement and support mentoring programmes to
help allay employee job-related stress. This implication is important since employee stress has
been associated with signi®cant costs, both ®nancial (Laws, 1996) and health-related (Manning
et al., 1996). Results of the present study suggest that organizations should couple mentoring
programmes with transformational leadership training for mentors to maximize reductions in
prote ge job-related stress (and its associated costs).
Limitations and future research paths
Certain limitations of the study, which are suggestive of future research paths, should be noted.
First, the sample consisted of graduate student participants, who collectively represented
employees from a wide variety of ages, backgrounds, and industries. Such a sample was judged
preferable to using employees within the same organization due to the potential for data
re¯ecting shared participant pool, organizationally-speci®c values, or mentoring relationships
that may or may not be representative of the general population. Nevertheless, the limitations of
generalizations from `convenient' sample data are acknowledged. Subsequent investigations
could employ samples from speci®c organizations and industries.
Second, MLQ-5X items employed in the present study to measure the laissez-faire construct
may be subject to socially desirable responses. While prior research (Bass and Avolio, 1989) has
indicated that the MLQ leadership measures are not likely to be associated with social desirability
bias, the potential for such bias in self-reports on laissez-faire items cannot be ruled out.
Future independent research should be conducted on potential social desirability bias in self and
other ratings of MLQ-5X items, especially those measuring laissez-faire leadership.
Third, given that 91 per cent of our sample were involved in informal mentoring relationships,
results of the present study are generalizable to informal mentoring relationships. Chao, Walz,
and Gardner (1992) noted distinctions in process between formal and informal mentoring
relationships. Future research should replicate the present study using a sample comprised of
primarily formal mentoring relationships.
Fourth, the present study examined the linkage between mentor transformational leadership
behavior and prote ge job-related stress under high and low levels of mentoring functions
received. Other important variables may potentially moderate this linkage. For example, future
research could focus on how cross-gender (Burke and McKeen, 1990), and/or cross-cultural
(Cox, 1993) issues may a€ect transformational leadership and job-related stress. In addition,
Copyright # 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Organiz. Behav. 21, 365±390 (2000)