The Effect of Mentoring on Succession Planning and Organizational Learning: The Mediating Role of Employee Professional Development (Case Study: Potash Company)
Subject Areas :
1 - Assistant Professor, Department of Educational Sciences, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Payam Noor University, Tehran, Iran.
Keywords: mentoring, employee professional development, organizational learning, succession planning, potash complex.,
Abstract :
Today, organizations, especially industrial organizations, recognize that investing in human resources is the cornerstone of sustainable success. In this context, managers facilitate succession planning through mentoring and organizational learning. Accordingly, the present study investigated the effect of mentoring on succession planning and organizational learning, with the mediating role of employee professional development in the Potash Complex. The present study was quantitative in terms of approach, an applied in terms of purpose, a descriptive and correlational in terms of data collection and method, and survey research in terms of implementation. The statistical population comprised all 550 employees of the Potash Complex, from which a random sample of 226 participants was selected. The data collection instruments included the Mentoring Questionnaire (Castro et al., 1993), the Succession Planning Questionnaire (Tabli et al., 2014), the Organizational Learning Questionnaire (Neff, 2001), and the Professional Development Questionnaire (Lang et al., 2015). The instruments’ validity was assessed through face and content validation, and their reliability was confirmed using Cronbach’s alpha coefficients (mentoring = 0.84; succession planning = 0.90; organizational learning = 0.91; employee professional development = 0.89). Descriptive statistics (frequency distribution tables and graphs) and inferential statistics (structural equation modeling using Amos software to test research hypotheses) were used to describe the findings. The results showed that mentoring had a positive and significant effect on succession planning (with a coefficient of 0.67), professional development of employees (with a coefficient of 0.63), and on organizational learning (with a coefficient of 0.52). Furthermore, the effect of professional development of employees on succession planning (with a coefficient of 0.45) and on organizational learning (with a coefficient of 0.32) was confirmed. On the other hand, the mediating effect of professional development of employees on the relationship between mentoring and succession planning was also confirmed with a coefficient of 0.297 and in the relationship between mentoring and organizational learning with a coefficient of 0.279.