This paper presents findings from a study measuring the perceived effects of mentoring on the careers of professional Mexican American municipal administrators. The literature suggests that mentors open doors, create opportunities, and, in general, help move a person’s career from entry-level to upper-management positions (Warner & Abegglen, 1955; Roche, 1979; Hale & Kelly, 1989; Forbes & Piercy, 1991; Knouse, Rosenfeld, & Culbertson, 1992; Guy, 1992; Kelly & Duerst-Lahti, 1995; Peddy, 1998). Moreover, it is suggested that organizations willing to invest in employee development can create a mentoring culture—a culture that does not consider employees disposable (Peddy, 1998). Creating a culture of trust and a sense of partnership—a mentoring environment--may result in developing the talents of all employees.

What is not known is whether having mentors plays an important role in the careers of a specific group of Hispanic professionals—the Mexican American in municipal administration. Research indicates that Hispanics, as a group, tend to lag behind other minority groups and are underrepresented at all levels of public employment (Alozie & Ramirez, 1999; Guajardo, 1996; Sisneros; 1993; Browning, Marshall & Tabb, 1984.) An important policy issue for senior government officials is--would formal mentoring programs help to increase the number of Hispanics in public administration?

Knouse (1992) suggests that the need for formal Hispanic mentoring programs will increase as more Hispanics enter white-collar positions. Among the public sector organizations with Hispanic mentoring programs are AT&T, Johnson & Johnson, Merrill Lynch, Federal Express, and the Ore-Ida company. Public sector organizations that have formal Hispanic mentoring programs include the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and the U.S. Army.

Mexican American professionals and their perceptions of mentoring are the focus of this study. However, Anglo-White and Black managers serve as comparison groups to determine if there are differences in perceived benefits from having mentors. Other groups, such as Native Americans and Asians are not included because they comprise only 1.9 percent and 1.6 percent of the City of Phoenix population and 1.6 percent and 2.2 percent of the population of the City of Tucson, respectively. Mexican Americans are the largest minority group in both cities (1990 STF3 Extract Report, Missouri State Census Data Center.)

Data were collected by self-administered questionnaires and interviews with City of Phoenix and City of Tucson administrators and officers of the City of Phoenix Hispanic Network, a Chapter of the International-City/County Management Association (ICMA). Questionnaires were distributed to Mexican American, Black, and Anglo/White administrators in three citywide job categories—executives, professionals, and supervisors. Administrators were asked to respond to questions about their mentoring experiences. They were asked if a mentor was instrumental in moving his or her career ahead and if they believed a formalized mentoring program would have helped their careers? It was expected that differences would be found among the ethnic groups at the three managerial levels.

It was expected that Anglo-White administrators would report having more mentors than Mexican Americans and Blacks, and it was expected that all participants would credit mentors with helping their careers. Results of this study do not support these expectations. Mexican American managers reported having more mentors; however, in the perceptions of these respondents, mentors were of no particular benefit to their careers.

Data were collected by personal interviews and self-administered questionnaires. Questionnaires were circulated to administrators in three ethnic groups: Hispanic, Black and Anglo-White. Because of the focus of this study, Mexican Americans were separated from all others in the "Hispanic" group. Administrators were separated further by managerial level--executive, professional, and supervisory. Descriptive statistics are presented within race categories.

The first section of this paper contains information on the number and distribution of questionnaires returned. The second section presents descriptions of participants by race, managerial level, ethnicity, and citizenship. Also presented are "between-city" distributions by ethnicity. The third section presents an analysis of participant responses to specific research questions. The paper concludes with a discussion and suggestions for future research.

The primary issue examined here is the perceived importance of mentoring on the careers of Mexican Americans. The literature suggests that differences can be expected by ethnicity and managerial level.

The total number of returned questionnaires was 278 (72.02%) of the 388 distributed. Of the responses, 277 were usable. This return rate exceeds the normal standard of 60 percent for sample surveys (Babbie, 1992). Among the respondents, there are 103 Mexican Americans (37.1%), 107 Anglo-Whites (38.5%), 11 "other Hispanic" (4.0%), 44 Blacks (15.8%), 8 "other race" (2.9%), and 5 "no race" (1.8%). This study is primarily about Mexican American professionals; Black, and Anglo-White administrators were used to make comparisons; therefore, all other categories were eliminated from analysis. Other groups such as Native Americans and Asians are included in the "other ethnicity" category and represent less than three percent of all respondents. Thus, there are insufficient numbers of Native American and Asian managers for meaningful analysis of these groups. Administrators who returned completed questionnaires include 58 executives (upper-managers), 121 professionals (mid-managers), and 98 supervisors (lower-level managers).

Table 1 presents distributions of usable questionnaires (N=254) by race and managerial level. Questionnaires of respondents who claimed "no race" or "other race" were eliminated from the analysis. Although the proportions of executives among both minority groups are smaller, as expected, there are sufficient cases for analysis across the combinations of ethnic group and managerial levels. Table 2 presents distributions by citizenship. Table 3 presents between-city distributions. For purposes of this analysis descriptive statistics are grouped by ethnicity and managerial level.

Table 1

Participant Distribution by Race and Managerial Level

Among Mexican American participants there are thirteen executives, fifty-six professionals, and thirty-four supervisors. Anglo-White participants include thirty-five executives, forty professionals, and thirty-two supervisors. Black participants include eight executives, fourteen professionals, and twenty-two supervisors. The minority participant pool reflects the fact that Mexican Americans are the dominant ethnic group in Phoenix and Tucson comprising twenty-six and twenty-eight percent of city populations, respectively. Anglo-Whites make-up approximately seventy percent and Blacks are less than five percent of city populations (1990 U.S. Census).

Table 2

Distribution by Ethnicity and Citizenship

Table 2 shows ninety-one respondents who self-identify as Mexican American are U.S. born, eight are naturalized citizens and one is not a citizen. Since the focus of this study is primarily on U.S. born Mexican American administrators, naturalized citizens and respondents who are not citizens were excluded from the study. All Blacks are included in the study. Citizenship and nativity is not, generally speaking, a troublesome issue with Anglo/Whites and Blacks, thus it was decided not to control for nativity in these groups.

Table 3

Between-City Distribution by Race

Table 3 shows the distribution of participants by City of employment and race. Overall the respondents are approximately evenly split between the two cities. That is, 124 people (49.0%) work in Phoenix and 129 (51%) work in Tucson. The racial distributions between the two cities are less balanced. Most of the Mexican Americans (70 administrators or 68%) are located in Tucson, versus 33 Mexican Americans participating from Phoenix. Conversely, most of the Blacks (35 administrators or 79.5%) who returned a questionnaire worked for Phoenix; only nine (20.5%) of the Black administrators who answered the questionnaire were located in Tucson. The Anglo/Whites are about evenly split between the two cities. The differences in numbers of minority participants reflect first, the differences in employee pools available for sampling and, second, the differences in the choices of minority administrators selected to complete the questionnaire. Since there is no theoretical reason to suspect between-city variation on key analyses variables, and because of the practical need to use two cities to acquire enough minority cases to analyze, the pool of respondent’s combines Tucson with Phoenix administrators.

Participants were asked to respond to the following questions about their mentoring experiences:

1. If you have had a mentor at the City, please rate the extent to which you believe this person’s guidance enhanced your opportunities for career advancement at the City.
2. Do you think the presence of a formalized City Mentoring Program would have helped in your career?

Both questions are examined in light of the data obtained from administrators. Analyses associated with each question are presented in the numerical order of the research questions. Research implications are discussed in greater detail in the summary.

Mentoring.

Each question addresses the issue of differences in the mentoring experiences of Mexican American, Anglo-White, and Black administrators. The approach to mentoring came from two directions. First, administrators were asked to rate the extent to which having a mentor helped their career. Second, administrators were asked whether they would be supportive of a formal mentoring program in their organization as a means of career advancement.

A simple single item rating task was used to assess administrator perception that mentoring had promoted their career growth: "If you had a mentor (formally or informally) at the City, please rate the extent to which you believe this person’s guidance enhanced your opportunities for career advancement." A set of fixed alternatives was offered to assess the degree to which careers were enhanced: 1 = mentor not helpful in this way; 2 = slightly helpful; 3 = moderately helpful; 4 = extremely helpful and 5 = critically helpful. Administrators who reported having no mentor were removed from the analysis. It is interesting to note in this connection that only 9 Mexican Americans and 2 Blacks reported that they had no mentors; 32 Anglo/Whites reported having no mentor. This suggests that informal mentoring is more prevalent for minority administrators than for majority administrators. The questionnaire did not ask participants to identify their mentor’s ethnicity, nor whether the mentor initiated contact or the person being mentored initiated contact. Both these issues should form agendas for future study, however.

Table 4 shows the mean scores for perceived career effects of mentoring by managerial level and ethnic group. A simple two-way analysis of variance shows that there are no statistically significant main effects for ethnicity (F=.380, p>.05) or for managerial level (F=.166, p>.05), and that the interaction term was also not significant (F=.481, p>.05). Indeed, the mean scores for each combination of ethnicity and managerial level lie between the perceptions that mentoring was "slightly" and "moderately" helpful.

Contrary to some literature, these relatively low ratings do not suggest that administrators at any level, or of any ethnic group, see mentoring as a vital part of career development. While this finding could be peculiar to the participants in this study, and while mentoring might be perceived to have other effects than career advancement (such as interpersonal support), it remains that these respondents did not rate its career utility very high. There is, of course, some observable variation in the generally low scores. The mean scores for Anglo/Whites are slightly lower than those of either minority group. The mean scores for Blacks are slightly higher than those for Mexican Americans. However, statistically speaking, these differences are not reliable differences.

These outcomes do not correspond to the expectations that underlie the study questions. It was anticipated that Anglo/Whites would be more likely to have mentoring experiences and that they would rate the career effects of those experiences higher than minority administrators. In these data, fewer Anglo/Whites had mentors than either minority group, and statistically speaking, there was no difference among the three ethnic groups in the perceived effects of mentoring on career development.

Table 4

Mentoring Effects by Race

Another mentoring issue addressed in the questionnaire dealt with the perception of the utility of establishing a formal City mentoring program. Specifically, participants were asked: "Do you think the presence of a formalized City Mentoring Program would have helped your career? Five fixed response alternatives were offered to each respondent: 1 = no help; 2 = slightly helpful; 3 = moderately helpful; 4 = extremely helpful; and 5 = critically helpful.

Table 5 shows the mean level of perceived career help from a formalized mentoring program by managerial level and ethnic group. A two-way analysis of variance on these data yields a statistically significant main effect for race (F=12.5, p<.05), but no significant effects for managerial level (F=2.5, p>.05) or the interaction term (F=.50, p>.05). Looking at the means for each ethnic group, two results are clear. Overall, the mean rankings for perceived utility of a "formal" City Mentoring Program, are higher than those for participants assessment of their past mentoring experiences (given Table 4). This suggests that members of all three ethnic groups believe that a formal program would be slightly more useful than an informal program. Since neither City has a formal program, it is assumed that the results in Table 4 refer to informal mentoring experiences. It is important to point out, however, that the rankings are still conservative. All Black administrator means and Mexican American professionals (mid-managers) place the likely utility as between "moderately" and "extremely" helpful, while all others rated utility between "slightly" and "moderately" helpful. These findings seem inconsistent with the results from Table 4, and suggest that there is a gap between the expectations for mentoring as career help as represented in the literature and the perceptions of minority and majority administrators in the two cities studied.

Table 5

Support for Formalized City Mentoring Program

It was expected that Anglo-Whites would report more mentoring experiences and that they would rate the over-all career effect of those experiences higher than Mexican American or Black administrators (Kelly & Duerst-Lahti, 1995; Forbes & Piercy, 1991; Knouse et al., 1992; Hale & Kelly, 1989; Roche, 1979). The results of this study do not support these expectations.

Contrary to expectations, minority administrators reported having slightly more informal mentoring experiences than Anglo-Whites. State differently, Anglo-Whites reported fewer mentoring experiences. It must be kept in mind, however, that there were no statistically significant differences among the three ethnic groups, nor were there any significant differences by managerial level that suggest any of the participants view mentoring as a vital part of career development.

A second approach to the mentoring issue dealt with whether any of the participants would support a formal, city sponsored, mentoring program. It was expected generally that minority administrators would support a formalized program to a greater extent than Anglo-Whites. This outcome is generally supported by the data. The results of this study show that Anglo-White administrators rate the expected utility of a city sponsored formal mentoring program from "slightly" to "moderately" helpful. Mexican American and Black administrators, on the other hand, rate the utility of such a program more highly. Minority administrators reported that a formalized program would be "moderately" to "extremely" helpful to their careers. These results suggest that all three ethnic groups believe that a formal program would be slightly more helpful than what appears to be an existing informal mentoring situation for all city administrators.

There are several possible explanations for these outcomes. First, it may be that the importance of mentoring to career advancement is over-rated in the literature for all ethnic groups. Secondly, minority administrators may think it is "fashionable" to respond more positively about mentoring experiences. Alternatively, minority administrators actually may have experienced greater mentoring experiences due to some unidentified organizational recognition, or organizational culture, of the need to offer informal assistance to members of minority groups as they enter the workforce. Such informal mentoring assistance may have come about by virtue of a general awareness generated by city sponsored diversity programs. Such an explanation is possible given that some administrators reported taking part in "sensitivity" and "cultural diversity" workshops sponsored by their respective municipalities. Whatever the explanation, it is reasonably clear that the majority of all administrators tend to support the idea of a formalized mentoring program.

Results of this study suggests it may be worthwhile to conduct a longitudinal study to determine whether, over time, a formalized program--which has been created in the City of Phoenix since the study was completed--is of greater benefit than informal mentoring situations. Other areas for future study include determining if Mexican American and Black administrators are mentored by males/females, Anglo/Whites, or a member of their own ethnic group. It may be useful also to determine who initiates the mentoring situation. Results suggest that replicating this study in other municipalities with large Mexican American populations may be worthwhile. Replicating the study may yield new results or shed light in new areas of importance to the career advancement of the Mexican American professionals who seek careers in government.

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