President/Executive Board Member
David Miron is one of the executive members of McBer which is a company in Boston and holds the position of Vice-President while David McClelland is the chairman and founder of the same company, but works at Harvard University as a Psychology Professor. They both authored “The Impact of Achievement Motivation Training on Small Business”. In this, Miron and McClelland (1979) argued that entrepreneurial training is essential for motivating businessmen in order to facilitate them in achieving their goals and improving their level of performance. Further, Miron and McClelland (1979) claimed, “businesses managed by the trained men grew faster by a number of indicators, such as sales and number of employees, than did businesses managed by untrained men” (p. 13).
Miron and McClelland (1979) used an achievement motivation-training program for seven years to create the impact on training on businessmen in Andhra Pradesh. Research findings have indicated that in Andhra Pradesh, business employment is high, but they could not fetch any details in terms of figures. As a result, further attempts were made to train Washington, D.C businessmen and their performance was regularly monitored for six months. Findings from this attempt indicated that business performance of the trained businessmen improved significantly over the years in comparison to untrained men.
The purpose of this paper is to reaffirm the need of having a single person being involved in the mentor training in order to improve the individual level performance, as well as to improvise the overall performance of the organization.
Problem Statement
Peer mentoring is an effective means of building intellectual capital, encouraging learning and sharing knowledge (Bryany, & Terborg, 2008, p. 1). Further, peer mentors provide psychological and job related support as well. These are essential in motivating individuals to improve their respective performances at individual levels. Unfortunately, most individuals involved in business activities do not have an access to the services of peer mentor trainers. This has limited the chances of such individuals to improve on their individual level performance, as well as affect the whole performance of the organization. Further, businessmen do not have close relationships with experienced business experts, which limit the success of peer mentoring of such individuals. As such, transfer of skills, knowledge, and experience to new businessmen does not take place effectively. Consequently, motivation level is low and individual level performance is below the expectations of most businessmen. In addition, presence of so many peer mentors with different ideologies compromises the success of the strategy of peer mentoring since businessmen to be trained are left at a confused state of mind as to what they should do or whom to believe. This necessitates the need for a single peer mentor.
Method Used
The method used in evaluating the impact of peer mentor training is illustrated by Bryant and Terborg (2008, p. 14). In this method, participants are fetched from different firms and areas, which include software design engineers, software testers, support professionals, usability engineers, and program managers. These jobs are regarded as knowledge-intensive and they are expected to earn considerable benefits from peer mentoring. A quasi-experimental design for the field-based was used with a control group. Repeated measures were adopted and surveys were conducted on a weekly basis. The sample population was comprised of 502 participants and they were engaged in extensive research for 3 months.
Findings
Figure 1: Business performance as a result of training
Figure 1 represents a tabulation of the impact of training on business performance level of an organization. The figures reported on the table are based on monthly analysis for the study.
Figure 2: Training inputs for peer mentor training
However, peer mentor training process incurs some additional costs as well. These costs are related to the funding of the program and reduction of the working time of businessmen and employees. This is illustrated in figure 2 as the training inputs, which are involved in the overall process of peer mentor training. Illustration of the training inputs in figure 2 is essential in order to perform an effective cost benefit analysis of the training process. Nevertheless, such training is associated with earning considerable benefits to individuals and organizations.
Analysis
As illustrated in figure 1, peer mentor training results in an improvement in the overall productivity of an organization. This was obtained irrespective of participants being from companies, which were underperforming or not performing at all. Income and sales improvement occurred according to the expectations, but such changes were not very significant. Employees’ median number did not change. Further, businessmen motivation improved as they received peer mentor training during the study. There was a direct linkage between employee motivation improvement and profitability improvement. This clearly indicated that peer mentor training resulted in an improvement in the motivational level of employees, as well as in the improvement level of the organization performance in terms of profitability.
Finally, one could observe a considerable interest in how the achievement of motivation training is related to the conventional technical training imparted in business management.
It has been well argued by Timmons that without instructions in business skills, motivation training in itself is not fruitful. Durand also put in a lot of efforts to compute the impact of these two types of training, individually and in combination, for a team
of black small-businessmen in St. Louis. (“Miron, D, & McClelland, D.”,1979)
Cost benefit analysis of the peer mentor training indicates that such training is cost effective and results in attainment of considerable benefits to trainees, as well as organizations. Such benefits include higher motivational levels, contribution towards business and organizational growth and improvement in the performance level of organizations.
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Bryant and Terborg (2008) article “Impact of Peer Mentor Training on Creating and Sharing Organizational Knowledge”, investigates the impact of psychology peer mentorship in terms of relationships creations, which contribute towards building intellectual capital, encourage learning, and sharing knowledge.
Peer mentorship training is one effective measure, which has the ability of improving employees’ mentorship skills, behavior and competence skills, and motivating them to take chance of all the upcoming opportunities, which emerge in the business environment. Peer mentor training also contributes towards sharing of knowledge and improving individual level performance, as well as the overall performance of an organization.
Another topic of interest is to notify whether the training was more helpful to those in the manufacturing sector, retail sector or for the service businesses. A list of some relevant
data have been shown above. One cannot improve the training modules of more than one type of business with a single case. The industrialized establishments were in huge numbers so that the total profit for such companies in sales and profits were more considerable. Also
the increase in productivity was more important for manufacturers, but at the same time it is not an easy task to reach a conclusion that the advancements in service and retail operations that were recorded were less important by any means.
Organizations have to focus on allocating adequate resources for peer mentor training in order to improve business skills of employees. Businessmen also need to participate effectively in peer mentor training in order to develop essential skills, which will warrant them to conduct and run their business activities in an effective manner, as well as improve on their respective performance level. As firms implement peer mentor training programs, they contribute significantly in helping peer mentors to share knowledge in an effective and efficient manner. In addition, peer mentor training should be adopted by organizations, which are focused at creating competitive advantages for their business environments. (“Bryant, S, & Terborg, J.”, 2008)
Organization level peer mentoring program contributes towards the following:
Improving individual business skills, competency skills, and behavioral skills,
Motivating an individual to engage in business and improve on individual level performance, and
Improves the overall performance of an organization and creates a competitive advantage.
The Executive Board of Junior Chamber of Commerce should embrace the peer mentor-training program. This program will contribute towards attainment of positive benefits to the organization and improvement of motivation level and performance of businessmen.
Works Cited:
Bryant, S, & Terborg, J. (2008). “Impact of Peer Mentor Training on Creating and Sharing
Organizational Knowledge”, Journal of Managerial Issues, Vol. 20, No. 1. Pp: 11-29.
Miron, D, & McClelland, D. (1979). “The Impact of Achievement Motivation Training on
Small Business”, Summer, Vol. 21, No. 4.
