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Reverse Mentoring
(2015)
The aim of this bachelor’s thesis is to give a detailed description of how Reverse Mentoring is applied in practice. Reverse Mentoring is the mentoring of a senior executive person in a company by a younger employee in topics like Web 2.0 and new technologies. Considering current trends like the demographic change, the multi-generational workforce, the digital transformation and the current demands on knowledge management, it becomes obvious that a new form of learning is required for an organization to stay competitive. Nine people that have experienced Reverse Mentoring in their company served as subjects for a study to further investigate about the practical application of Reverse Mentoring. The study was carried out via telephone interviews. The subjects responded to questions regarding the implementation of the program, the formal structure of the programs, the procedure of matching tandem partners, the characteristics of the program’s participants, the challenges they experienced, the positive and negative experiences and the factors they consider vital for a successful implementation. In a next stage the main aspects of the study’s results were compared to findings in literature in order to verify their generalizability and to develop those findings further in theory. The thesis concludes that Reverse Mentoring can be a tool that helps companies to face current trends, and the reader gets a detailed view on how Reverse Mentoring can be applied in a company.
Today’s workplace is composed of three different generations, which are considered to be substantially different from each other. Popular press and academics defend that neglecting to address these differences can generate negative organizational outcomes. Therefore, there is a growing body of research recommending generational specific practices to minimize the effects of generational differences in organizations. Nevertheless, not every practice tends to be based on empirical evidence on generational differences, which raises doubts about its effectiveness. The goal of this paper is to propose reverse mentoring as a practice to help organizations understand and manage generational differences better. To achieve this goal, a summary of published secondary data on empirical evidence of generational differences in the workplace was gathered, and the findings were linked to the function/outcomes of reverse mentoring, which allowed for the practice to be recommended based on substantial empirical evidence. Moreover, primary qualitative research was gathered through interviews to support the findings. Despite the limitations encountered, reverse mentoring is proved to be a long-term beneficial tool to understand and manage generational differences in the workplace.