Episodic, Network, and Intersectional Perspectives Taking a Communicative Stance on Mentoring in the Workplace

We propose a research agenda to study mentoring as constituted communicatively from episodic, network, and intersectional perspectives. The episodic perspective highlights the everyday communicational events and moments of interactions where actions and meanings of mentoring are co-constructed. The network perspective encourages a holistic analysis of myriad agents, relationships, and evolutions for mentoring at different levels and stages in the form of communicative networks. Finally, the intersectional perspective enables researchers to view men-torship as comprised of complex, politically invested, and socially constructed intersections of identities. We call for communication research and practice on mentoring from these perspectives.