The Impact Of Protégés’ Feedback Seeking On Mentors’ Knowledge Sharing Behavior

At present, the global competition goes toward the direction of aknowledge-based economic development. Peter. F. Drucker (1995), the father ofmodern management, pointed out, knowledge has become a major economicresource which dominant and may even be the only competitive advantage resources.The key for organizations to obtain core competitiveness and sustainabledevelopment capacity lies in the organization’s knowledge management capabilities,and in the many aspects of knowledge management, knowledge sharing betweenemployees is the most critical part (Hendriks,1999). Mentorship as a typical way ofknowledge sharing, bring the concern of the majority of scholars and entrepreneurs.How to encourage mentors to share knowledge? According to social exchange theory,to achieve the ultimate goal of the individual, they have to interact with others.Individual must take the means to contribute to the achievement of these goals. Inorder to promote knowledge sharing between the mentors and protégés, protégés cantake the initiative to adopt certain behaviors. Feedback seeking as an effective wayto get information will affect the relationship with knowledge sharing. This studywill use empirical research methods to explore impact of protégés’ feedback seekingbehavior impact on mentors’ knowledge sharing behavior.This research is based on the analysis of139pairs of the mentor and protégés,and finds that:(1) The protégé’s feedback seeking behavior is positively associatedwith mentor’s knowledge sharing behavior;(2) Mentors’ attribution moderate therelationship of protégés’ feedback seeking behavior and the quality of therelationship of mentor and protégés. Protégé’s feedback seeking behavior ispositively related to relationship quality of mentor and protégés which is lower whenmentor attribute protégés’ feedback seeking behavior to impression managementmotivations; Protégé’s feedback seeking behavior is positively related to relationshipquality of mentor and protégés which is higher when mentor attribute protégés’ feedback seeking behavior to performance improvement motivations;(3)Relationship quality of mentor and protégé plays a mediating role in the correlationbetween protégé’s feedback seeking behavior and performance improvement, as wellas the impression management.