Article
Mentorship and creativity: Effects of mentor creativity and mentoring style
Research Policy
(2021)
Abstract
This paper examines mentorship as a mechanism for individuals to acquire and develop creativity. More specifically, we study the effect of mentor creativity on protégé creativity and how this effect is moderated by the mentoring styles of autonomy and exploration. Our empirical analysis focuses on formal PhD supervision and training, drawing on survey and bibliometric data for 143 life-science professors (mentors) and their 685 PhD students (protégés). We find that the effect of mentor creativity on protégé creativity is insignificant during protégés’ PhD studies but becomes significantly positive after protégés hold faculty positions, suggesting that the mentorship effect takes time to manifest but is enduring. Furthermore, the effect of mentor creativity on protégé creativity is significant only when protégés have high levels of autonomy and exploration during PhD studies. This suggests the importance of autonomy and exploration in the effective transfer of creativity from mentors to protégés.
Keywords
- Mentorship,
- Creativity,
- Academic training,
- Autonomy,
- Exploration
Disciplines
Publication Date
Winter December 16, 2021
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2021.104451
Citation Information
Jian Wang and Sotaro Shibayama. "Mentorship and creativity: Effects of mentor creativity and mentoring style" Research Policy Vol. 51 Iss. 3 (2021) ISSN: 0048-7333 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/jwang/29/