Abstract:
This research seeks to analyse the lived experiences of mentoring as experienced
by black managers. The study makes use of an Interpretative Phenomenological
Analysis (IPA) to achieve this aim. The purpose of the research is to explore the lived
mentoring experiences of black management within the petrochemical industry, as
well as service companies or service providers within the industry.
The high levels of inequality in South Africa, diverse upbringings, dissimilar
opportunities, and varying levels of education makes for entirely different mentoring
views and experiences as presented by the participants that took part in this study
by partaking in open-ended, semi-structured interviews. In assessing these lived
experiences, the research looked to determine how concepts such as employment
equity, affirmative action and broad-based black economic empowerment has
influenced the country since Apartheid.
The research showed that some organisations and mentors are on the right path
regarding how they mentored their mentees in accordance with policies such as
employment equity, affirmative action and B-BBEE, whereas others are not. The
Ubuntu principles of care, respect, responsiveness, and interconnectedness are
evident throughout the positive lived experiences of the participants and absent
during the negative experiences from the participants, which shows that Ubuntu
plays an important role in mentoring experiences.
