An Interpretative phenomenological analysis of the of the In-depth lived experiences of mentoring by black management

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.