Mentoring in the workplace has become an increasingly popular trend because of its touted success at addressing the career and social related needs of employees. While the majority of the research on mentoring has examined protege benefits, far fewer studies have examined the potential negative effects of mentoring. Moreover, little is known about the antecedents of negative mentoring experiences. A primary objective of the present study was to investigate relations between mentor and protege perceptions of organizational politics and reports of functional and dysfunctional mentoring. In addition, I examined the joint contribution of functional and dysfunctional mentoring to a number of protege outcomes. Data were collected from 93 mentor-protege dyads employed across the United States by a marketing communications business. Results indicated that mentors who perceived their climate to be more political expressed greater motivation to mentor for their own self-enhancement and lesser motivation to mentor for their own intrinsic satisfaction. proteges who perceived their climate to be more political reported a greater incidence of dysfunctional mentoring. protege reports of the functional mentoring they received accounted for unique variance in predicting supervisor ratings of their performance, whereas dysfunctional mentoring accounted for unique variance in predicting turnover intentions, stress, and job satisfaction. The results of this study broaden our understanding of the manner in which mentoring relationships can go awry.

Mentoring relationships can have both costs and benefits for mentors and their proteges. The present research examined the degree to which mentors' perceived costs and benefits affect the functional and dysfunctional mentoring they provide to their proteges. Additionally, I investigated whether mentor-perceived costs and benefits were associated with the mentors' own goal orientation and the goal orientation of their proteges. Data were collected from 86 proteges and their current supervisory mentors. Consistent with expectations, when mentors reported greater costs of embarrassment associated with their relationship, the proteges reported receiving greater dysfunctional mentoring. Proteges who reported receiving greater functional mentoring tended to have mentors who perceived greater benefits of mentoring them. Both proteges and mentor goal orientations demonstrated significant correlations with mentor-perceived costs and benefits of their relationships. Implications for training and reinforcing functional mentoring will be discussed.