A critical review of business coaching research: challenges for theory and practice in HRM

Abstract

Business coaching has become a popular tool for HRM with a number of advocates making a variety of claims about its benefits and practice. Despite this popularity, until recently there has been little published systematic empirical research into business coaching. This paper reports on a critical review of 70 published empirical research papers investigating business coaching processes and outcomes. This was a significantly larger body of research than that examined in previous reviews in this area and the present paper was focussed on the implications of the available evidence for theoretical development in this area. While the review confirmed many of the conclusions drawn in previous reviews of this area about the effectiveness of coaching and research gaps, it also identified new conclusions and directions. In particular this review did identify convergence around several factors that contribute to perceived effective coaching practice and highlighted a number of issues to be resolved in further research including determining who is the primary beneficiary of coaching, the factors that contribute to coach credibility, and the need to better understand the organisational and wider context for the coachee. The present review also suggested that theories from the field of attitude-behaviour change could provide valuable theoretical frameworks in combination with ideas from counselling for further development of research and practice in business coaching.