Virtual mentoring: A quantitative study to measure the effectiveness of virtual mentoring versus face -to -face mentoring

As organizations continue to become global, one of the key organizational challenges of the 21st century is developing future leaders who can continue the vision of the organization. In this global world, attracting and developing future leaders lends organizations a competitive advantage while an inability to develop future leaders weakens them. Many organizations are becoming global virtual organizations and mentoring and coaching is extensively being used as an important tool for developing future leaders. The purpose of this study was twofold: (a) to examine the difference on number of promotions and the number of times the mentee was assigned additional opportunities by face-to-face or virtual mentoring model, and (b) to assess to what extent does face-to-face or virtual mentoring model moderate the relationship between mentoring activities and the number of promotions and the number of times the mentee was assigned additional opportunities. The research strategy used for this study was non-experimental and descriptive and employed a quantitative research methodology. Alleman Mentoring Activities Questionnaire (AMAQ) was the primary instrument used to collect mentoring relationship data for this study. The results of this research determined that face-to-face mentoring relationship may lead to more promotions, while there were no differences on the number of additional opportunities a mentee receives with the chosen mentoring model---virtual or face-to-face.