The Impact of Cognitive Accuracy on Individual Position and Attitudes in Informal Mentoring Networks

Abstract

Drawing upon mentoring theory and cognitive social network research, this study explores the mediating mechanism how an individual¡¯s accuracy in perceiving intra-organizational mentoring ties influences general attitudinal outcomes (i.e., organizational commitment and job satisfaction) via his or her mentoring network centrality. Cognitive accuracy in mentoring network perception indicates the extent to which an individual accurately perceives the mentoring relationships among the organizational members. This study hypothesizes individual accuracy in mentoring network perception positively relates to his or her eigenvector centrality (i.e., to what extent an individual is connected to ¡°well-connected¡± others) in the same network and also hypothesizes individual centrality positively mediates the relationship between mentoring network accuracy and individual attitudes. Cognitive social structure data were collected from 23 individuals working in a small for-profit organization in the Korean IT industry. Based on the social network analyses of 23 by 23 matrices of each of 23 individuals, mentoring network accuracy and eigenvector centrality were extracted. The regression-based bootstrapping analyses supported all hypotheses. While previous mentoring research has focused on the relationship between participation in mentoring experience and individual attitudes, this study found a new path to enhanced individual attitudes focusing on an individual¡¯s central position based on the accurate perception of the structure in the mentoring network.