The Antecedents And Consequences Of Mentoring In The Chinese Context

Mentoring as an effective measure to develop organizational human capital has been highly concerned by theorists and managers domestic and oversea. Mentoring is helpful for new employees (proteges) to increase their career successes through providing vocational support, psychosocial support and role modeling. Although previous research has made great progress during the past thirty years, there are some omissions. Specifically, little research has focused on the impact factors of mentoring or knowledge sharing behaviors of mentors from an integrated perspective. Furthermore, we still know little about the mechanisms and process by which mentors exerts their influences on proteges’ outcomes. Finally, we need to examine more functions of mentoring besides the positive effect on proteges’career success. Accordingly, the present research examines the antecedents and consequents of mentoring in the Chinese context and also aims to provide some implications for the management of mentoring.This dissertation consists of eight chapters and could be summarized into five parts: introduction (chapter1), literature review (chapter2), empirical study (chapter3,4,5,6), implication (chapter7) and inclusion (chapter8). Specifically, this research examined the antecedents of mentoring in chapter4, the mechanisms through which formal mentoring influences proteges work attitudes in chapter5and the mechanisms by which mentoring affects protege’s organizational deviance in chapter6. Main conclusions are following:Firstly, proteges’learning willingness, organizational rewards and mentor personality interactively influenced on the knowledge sharing behavior of mentors. Proteges’learning willingness was positively related to mentors’ knowledge sharing behavior. Results also indicated that organizational rewards, mentors’ openness, and conscientiousness would interact with proteges’ learning willingness and mentors’knowledge sharing behavior. Specifically, when mentors’ openness or conscientiousness was high, organizational rewards would weak the relationship between proteges’learning willingness and mentors’ knowledge sharing behavior.Secondly, formal mentoring was positively related to protege’s affective commitment and negatively related to turnover intention in the Chinese context. It indicated that the previous results in Western cultural context could be generalized to other non-Western countries. Moreover, perceived psychological safety of proteges partly and fully mediated the above relationships. Our findings explored a new mechanism (psychological safety) to develop a more complete understanding of the inner working of formal mentoring. Finally, protege’s "power distance orientation", a cultural value, moderated the relationship between formal mentoring and psychological safety. Some implications for research and practice of our findings are discussed.Thirdly, rare research considered the impacts of mentoring on proteges’negative attitude and behaviors, such as workplace deviance. This study found that perceived mentoring influences proteges’ organizational deviance. Both job embeddedness and organization identification partially mediated the relationship between mentoring with workplace deviance. There was also supported for developmental climates as a moderator of the relationship between mentoring and job embeddedness and organization identification such that the relationship is higher when the developmental climates are higher.Based on the above conclusions and ERG theory, the present research analyzed the three levels of mentoring motivation and proposed the integrated impact factors of mentoring. Then, it analyzed the influencing role of management system and organizational climate on mentoring and some management policies were proposed.Finally, we summarized the whole research and indicated research limitations and directions for the future study.