The dark side of mentoring in academic accounting career. A phenomenographic research from Italy

Purpose: In a previous study, Siboni and Galizzi (2017) found that mentoring is one of the barrier that Italian women have to face to enter and advance in academic career. This paper aims to investigate and... [ view full abstract ]

• Purpose: In a previous study, Siboni and Galizzi (2017) found that mentoring is one of the barrier that Italian women have to face to enter and advance in academic career. This paper aims to investigate and discuss the role that mentoring plays in women academic career, by investigating women’s experience in accounting.
• Design/methodology/approach: This study uses a phenomenographic approach. The goal of phenomenography is to find the variation in individuals’ ways of understanding, through the experience, a phenomenon in the surrounding world (Marton, 1981). The current research investigates how 24 Italian women, at different hierarchical levels, experienced the mentoring in their career. The phenomenographic approach appears to be consistent with the aim of the present study because it identifies and describes the different ways in which women experienced mentoring in their career.

• Findings: We found that mentoring is a two-faced medal that could affect women career positively or negatively. In particular, we found three different roles that mentor plays in women academic career. A positive effect has been found where the mentor supports the developing of scholar abilities. A negative effect has been found where the mentor does not promote the development of the scholar, but exploits his/her ability to work. Finally, no effect has been found where the mentor miss his/her role, by not giving any advice to scholar.
• Originality/Value: Mentoring is always assumed to have a positive effect in developing academic career. This paper at our knowledge is the only one that by investigating the experience of women in accounting academia, shades the light on the fact that mentoring may have dark sides which are specific to the academia. In this way, the paper aims to contribute to the international literature on mentoring as well as to gender literature.
• Paper type: research paper.
• Keywords: Gender literature; Mentoring; Academic Career; Accounting; Barriers; Phenomenography.