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5746While mentorship promotes the individual development of protégés and the value of enterprise interests, the disorder phenomena of " church protégés, starving mentors” " mentors are unwilling to train protégés” " hold back a trick or two in teaching a trade or skill” " nepotistic or gangs between mentors and protégés” and so on are commonplace. The research on dysfunctional mentorship is a key frontier subject in the study on enterprise mentorship. According to the relevant literature and social network analysis methods, this paper clarifies and defines the concept and characteristics of dysfunctional mentorship. From the perspective of the guiding subject, dysfunctional mentorship includes apprentices’ perception disorder and mentors’ perception disorder; from the perspective of content transfer, dysfunctional mentorship includes knowledge hoarding, knowledge exclusion, and economic cost differences. Meanwhile, through a systematic review of existing research, this paper finds that the formation of dysfunctional mentorship is composed of four aspects of capacity characteristics: individual level factors, mentor-protégé exchange level factors, task level factors, and organizational level factors. Among them, the individual level includes personality trait factors and individual impression management strategies; the mentor-protégé exchange level includes the homology and consistency of the mentoring, the interpersonal reciprocity of the mentoring and the form of mentorship; the task level includes task characteristics and task binding commitment; the organizational level includes factors such as organizational culture and organizational rewards. In addition, this paper further explores the impact of dysfunctional mentorship. At the individual level, the impact on protégés is mainly reflected in the psychological pressure and negative emotions, the attitudes and work intentions, and the negative behaviors in the workplace. The negative impact on mentors is mainly reflected in the individual behavior, workplace guidance behavior and other aspects. The organizational impact is mainly reflected in the lack of organizational trust, weakening of cohesion, internal discrimination within the organization, and nepotism. Based on the above research, this paper constructs an integration model of dysfunctional mentorship, and puts forward future research directions. It believes that the follow-up research can further develop the localization research of dysfunctional mentorship, explore the behavioral characteristics of dysfunctional mentorship in the Chinese cultural context（including Confucian culture, paternalistic culture, collectivist culture, face culture, etc.）for a breakthrough in the content structure. Finally, this paper provides breakthrough suggestions for the influential effect and the formation mechanism of dysfunctional mentorship. It also provides a systematic theoretical framework for the follow-up research, which is conducive to the effective research and practice of enterprise mentorship.
/ Journals / Foreign Economics & Management
Foreign Economics & Management
LiZengquan, Editor-in-Chief
ZhengChunrong, Vice Executive Editor-in-Chief
YinHuifang HeXiaogang LiuJianguo, Vice Editor-in-Chief
Is Enterprise Mentorship Definitely Full of Positive Energy? A Literature Review and Prospects of Dysfunctional Mentorship
Foreign Economics & Management Vol. 41, Issue 08, pp. 73 - 85 (2019) DOI:10.16538/j.cnki.fem.2019.08.006
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Cite this article
Cui Qi, He Yanzhen. Is Enterprise Mentorship Definitely Full of Positive Energy? A Literature Review and Prospects of Dysfunctional Mentorship[J]. Foreign Economics & Management, 2019, 41(8): 73-85.
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