Hi Stephanie,
I have a few comments based on first-hand experience and a suggestion for a followup at NMSU with someone in the business dept who has more extensive first-hand experience if you haven't talked to him already.
I served as a law enforcement national park ranger (US-NPS) some years back, with Patrol, firefighting, law enforcement, and visitor protection, and I was assigned an informal mentor as a rookie cop.
I agree with Ivan that most of my learning and performance came from the unit cohesion and interactions I had with the station, rather than a single individual. I found my mentor to be a marginal fit and poor role model.
In my experience of paramilitary chain of command orgs, individual performance is somewhat sublimated under unit cohesion and unit identity. The individual's performance is affected by the expectations set by the leader. The mentor may or may not be the best conduit for expressing that. For example,
In our sub-district, we newer guys were gung-ho: setting records for citations, arrests, rescues, visitor contacts, over-time, things of that nature. This reflected the personality of the new district ranger who wanted to set a new pace.
The older guys, including my mentor and another guy, the sub-district ranger, took a lower profile, go it slow approach, with less of a "heavy" handedness. They were far more concerned about fitting into the culture of the overall park and the surrounding community.
The sub-district and district ranger were in direct conflict and this was communicated down to the line staff in conflicting mandates.
At the time, I was shocked that individual performance was viewed positively or negatively based on how well it expressed the unstated and unwritten rules. OCB and performance in this world was therefore moderated not by military-ness but the judgement of the leaders in terms of perception by others on the outside of the unit... And those perceptions were multi-level (higher levels in chain of command, the public, other officers in squad, other squads).
Perhaps that illuminates possible unobserved latent variables as either moderators or mediators for your study...
You might want to follow up with Joe Gladstone, assistant prof at NMSU - he was my partner in the NPS and worked as a ranger for a number of years. We talked about this conflict quite a bit. Joe was also a Marine in an elite special ops group and studies management history.
Good luck! Lori
On Feb 17, 2014, at 10:21 PM, Stephanie Maynard-Patrick <
svmp@NMSU.EDU> wrote:
Ivan,
Thank you for your comments, you have given me much to think about in regards of the differences between mentoring episodes and social learning. I would ask from your first hand experience, what other than learning some of the skills and knowledge you needed, did you or others gain from mentors (or being mentors) in the fire service? I seems like I might need to explore other outcome variables, as the variance in performance is so low. I also assume it was your experience that in the fire service there were very high and exact performance standards which if not followed resulted in the quick termination of employees? If so, would you consider this element part of the organization's structure or something else?
Many thanks for your response and assistance!
Stephanie Maynard-Patrick
PHD Candidate
Department of Management
New Mexico State University
svmp@nmsu.edu 575-646-6847
Hi Stephanie,
I did some research on firefighters in a cross-cultural study comparing the firefighters from Caracas, Venezuela and their counterparts in Oklahoma City, Ok! This so many moons ago that the paper was really typed on an IBM typewriter! Remember them? The firefighters in Venezuela (at the time) existed in more paramilitary discipline regime than the guys in OKC! Working conditions at the time were also different, but these two groups did not show any difference with respect to their satisfaction with the job itself! Looked at task technology but the measure applied (developed by one of my advisors) did not work well!
I must tell you that I was a firefighter myself for many years in Venezuela before I became an academic. While it is true that in many fire departments they assign a mentor to the rookies it is also true that firefighters, more that police officers, spend a lot more time clustered together in their fire station! The togetherness that exists in the fire station is augmented when in fire situations. There is a whole lot of informal learning taking place all the time both in the fire station and when fighting fires! This learning comes from the mentor and from the veterans in the service. So, I don't think that it is too easy to separate both sources of learning! My last rank was that of Captain and I will be guiding, teaching, helping the other guys learn more and better what they were doing regardless of seniority. Some times the mentor would be there too! Although I have been away from the active service for many, many years many of the new guys still see me as one of them, even here in the U.S.!
Thanks,
Ivan
Dr. R. Ivan Blanco
Department of Management
McCoy College of Business Administration
Texas State University
San Marcos, TX 78666
Phone (512) 245-1842 rb39@txstate.edu
17 Feb 2014
Hi Stephanie,
I have surveyed EMT/firefighters several times and I am not sure the concept of "militaryness" is entirely represented as you intend in that sample occupation. You suggest EMT/firefighters and police are military-type occupations. However, they may be in uniform and have strong cultures but are often unionized, have long tenures with their organizations and expect to be employed for an entire career, and conduct their work in the surrounding community. Military personnel are non-union and often have expectations of short careers in the military except for the career personnel. The firefighters all have similar jobs and work in the same conditions and environments while military personnel have varied jobs and ranks. Military personnel differ by enlisted and commissioned designations, too. I am not sure the military personnel often have mentors.
These are some of the differences that might influence construction of a measure of your construct. If I were designing a measure, I might relate it to organizational commitment and organizational culture. I might also relate it to a requirement for obedience to the command structure--not necessarily an authoritarian view but an implied respect for rank and position of authority.
Good luck with your work.
Dave McLain
Hamilton, NY
On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 5:56 PM, Stephanie Maynard-Patrick
<svmp@nmsu.edu> wrote:
Hello Everyone!
Please forgive cross postings with RMNET.
We've been collecting data with fireman as the respondents, and gotten some surprising results. We are looking at the following relationship: INDEPENDENT VARIABLE: an individual's performance as a mentor; DEPENDENT VARIABLES: his or her protégé's job performance and OCB.
Contrary to our theory, we get a non-significant correlation between mentor's performance and protégé's performance and a significant but negative relationship between mentor's performance and protégé's OCB.
Also we noticed VERY little variance in job performance and OCB. The means and variances were 6.1 (7 point scale) mean, .34 variance and 5.34 (7 point scale) mean, .71, respectively. Perhaps lack of variance explains the non-significant correlation????
Our sample consists of firefighters which we judge to work within an organization with characteristics similar to military organizations. All new employees are assigned a mentor for their first year, and many individuals enter into informal mentoring relationships after that point. Respondents indicated that 88% have been mentored, 47% are currently being mentored, and about 50% of individuals currently are serving as mentors.
Has anyone seen these type of results?
Of course it doesn't have to be mentoring, but the idea that in a military type sample, otherwise sound relationships may not hold.
We wonder if perhaps some moderating variable (militaryness [for lack of a better term]) could be attenuating the relationships. We were wondering because it makes much sense to us that if someone was mentored well, then they would perform well, or at least better than someone who was mentored poorly. Of course, our theory could be wrong but before giving up, we wanted to see if anyone had any input for us.
Further, we'll be conducting more surveys at other fire and police departments in the near future and would like to include a measure to capture this unique "militaryness," but I have had trouble finding a construct that quite embraces what we're looking for. I was hoping someone could recommend a construct (ideally with measures) for the individual's perception of the degree of "militaryness" of the organization.
Many thanks in advance!