Does mentoring deserve another look?

In recent decades, mentoring has been identified as a worthwhile workplace learning activity for men, women and minority groups in a variety of organisational settings such as large and small corporations, government departments, hospitals, universities and schools. Mentoring has received enormous coverage in both the popular literature and academic literature. Some of these sources have hailed the mentoring process as a panacea for a variety of personal ills (Torrance 1984), while a smaller body of literature has cautioned about the 'dark side' of mentoring (Long 1997). The purpose of this chapter is to report on findings from empirical research conducted in the area of mentoring in order to draw more than tentative conclusions about its benefits and limitations, and its implications, challenges and future directions for human resource (HR) managers and other stakeholders affected by it.