(RE)shaping entrepreneurial mentoring in the accelerator at the intersection of performance and community logics

This study takes an institutional logics perspective to examine competing stakeholder logics in a new publicly funded French accelerator to foster the development of entrepreneurial firms. The study aims to understand how the accelerator staff managed the different logics that emerged during the mentoring programme. Design/methodology/approach Over a period of eighteen months, the authors used a process-based research design to follow two cohorts comprising 20 mentoring dyads, engaging in 40 narrative interviews with mentors, mentees and business accelerator officials, as well as conducting overt participant observation and archival data analysis. Findings This emerging mentoring programme encountered tensions emanating from two conflicting logics. Confronted with institutional pressures for managing the programme, the accelerator team first endorsed a performance-driven logic, reflected in potential economic outputs for mentee firms. They gradually acknowledged that mentoring practice can also benefit from a community logic built on trust, mutual respect and reflexive thinking. Originality/value By revealing how competing logics were managed in the accelerator, the study brings two contributions to the literature on entrepreneurial mentoring. Firstly, it shows that the governance mechanisms in place contributed to creating and resolving the tensions that emerged in the accelerator regarding performance versus community logics. Secondly, the study shows how the consensus gradually reached was contingent on the changing perception of the role of mentoring among the various stakeholders in the accelerator.