Learning by Helping: A Bounded Rationality Model of Mentoring

Within an organization, a bounded rational principal organizes a promotion test based on a sequence of test regarding candidates' relative performances. We assume the principal to suffer from limited ability to rank the performances, only identifying the best in each test. Furthermore, he satisfies the expected gains do not decreases whit the information generated by additional tests. Then, mentoring is shown to improve the information about candidates' ability when the principal offers help to the current best candidate provided by a manager promoted after a similar contest.