The Role of the Organization in a Coaching Process: A Scoping Study of the Professional and Scientific Literature

ABSTRACT

When a coaching process terminates before the end, the organization is mostly at fault (Thompson et al. 2008). Despite this alarming information, the role of the organization in their employees’ coaching process is generally disregarded and minimized. To address this issue, this article presented a scoping study to deepen the understanding of organizational factors influencing coaching effects. In response to calls from researchers who have highlighted the need to include organizational variables in future studies, we identified and analyzed 63 empirical (n = 35), theoretical (n = 6) and practical (n = 22) records. Following analysis, three categories of organizational antecedents of coaching effects were obtained: organizational culture, support, and common goal. Our findings provide an original contribution for organizations and practitioners, as organizations and coaches will be able to better identify the best conditions to promote before, during, and following a coaching process. In turn, this will allow them to facilitate and maintain the positive effects of coaching. Findings, implications, limits, and avenues for future research are discussed.

Practice points

• The role of organizations is particularly important in promoting positive coaching effects.

• Successful conditions must be ensured before, during and following a coaching process to promote and maintain its positive effects.

• Support from key stakeholders (e.g. supervisors, peers, senior management) and a supportive organizational culture should be implemented to improve the effectiveness of the coaching processes.

KEYWORDS:

• Coaching
• coaching efficacy
• literature review
• organizational antecedents
• scoping study

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.