It is the foundation to establish sustainable competition for enterprises that keep the ability to create and apply knowledge. As the value of knowledge is mainly instantiated in tacit knowledge, it is important for enterprises to increase the amount of tacit knowledge and apply it. Mentoring is one of typical models to implement knowledge socialization, which is given serious attention by scholars and entrepreneur. However, there is less research that takes cultural values into account when we discuss mentoring. Whether cultural values do influence the effect of implementing mentoring? In different countries, should we adjust measures to local conditions when enterprises implement mentoring? In the research, we theoretically discussed the relationship among mentoring, power distance orientation and innovative behavior, in which we also took psychological safety into account. Research results have indicated that mentoring is positively related to innovation behavior, in which perceived psychological safety plays a mediating role and power distance orientation plays a regulating role. What’ more, protégés’ power distance moderates the positive relationship between mentoring and innovation behavior in such a way that the relationship will be stronger for protégés who are lower rather than higher in power distance.
Knowledge is the foundation to innovation, and innovation is a motivation to development [
Mentoring is one of typical models to implement knowledge socialization, which is given serious attention by scholars and entrepreneurs. In western countries, enterprises use mentoring as a way to train new employees. More and more scholars become focused on the related problems of mentoring [
Until now, most of the researches of mentoring are used western samples. It is doubt whether some existent researches would not be available in other culture scenes [
Other studies about mentoring and innovation behavior have shown that mentoring would be positive to share tacit knowledge, which is beneficial to improve creation in research [
In the research, we would analyze the relationship among mentoring, innovation behavior and psychological safety, in order to explain the mechanism between mentoring and innovation behavior. The atmosphere of psychological safety could promote employees to create. When employees feel psychological safety, they would be more willing to collect information and adopt new approaches to deal with problems. But there are less of researches discussing the relationship between mentoring and innovation behavior from the perspective of psychological safety.
Last but not least, many studies have shown that the difference in culture not only shows at the level of country and social, but also shows in the individual level. It means that different individuals in the same country may have different orientation in power distance [
In short, we theoretically discussed the relationship among perceptions of mentor roles, power distance orientation and innovative behavior, in which we took psychological safety into account to analyze the relationship among the four variables.
In order to achieve the objection of the research, we mainly use literature research method to do the study. Literature research mainly refers to do the research by collecting identifying the reorganizing existing literature, and then come up with a scientific cognition of the research topic. There are two aspects of the value of the literature research. One is that we can get new argument, new research perspective and new idea through doing the literature research. The other is that we can get revelation and evidence for our view from the previous researches. In our study, we use literature method to collect relative previous research results, and then come up with the idea that power distance orientation as a regulated variable may influence the relationship between mentoring and innovation behavior. At the same time, we take psychological safety into account, in order to analyze the relationship among mentoring, innovation behavior and power distance orientation better.
Mentoring can be defined as a close interpersonal relationship between the senior managers or colleagues (mentor) and junior members or colleagues (protégés). Mentors provide three main functions, which include vocational support, role modeling and social support. The goal to provide vocational support is to improve protégés’ skills for career development by providing sponsorship, exposure chances, coaching, protection and challenging assignments. The goal to provide social support is to improve protégés’ competency and confidence by providing acceptance, counseling and friendship. Role modeling means that protégés imitate the behavior, skills and attitudes of mentors shown, and protégés learn how to deal with tasks and get confidence.
Innovation behavior can be defined that members in the organization put his new ideas about products, service and process into practice. Mentoring that is one of typical models to implement knowledge socialization could helpful to share tacit knowledge [
Hypothesis 1: Mentoring is positively related to protégés’ innovation behavior.
Kahn (1990) defined that psychological safety is a feeling of competence that member could show his image, position and career. Nembhard and Edmondson (2006) defined psychological safety once again that psychological safety is a common faith in a team, which means try to risk would be safe in the team [
Hypothesis 2: Mentoring is positively related to protégés’ psychological safety.
Before employees decide whether to take an action or mark a decision, employees will weigh whether their decision would bring risk depent on the atmosphere in the organization. If employees think their trial would make them into risk, they would not do that [
Hypothesis 3: While employees feel psychological safety, employees would be more to innovate.
Other studies have shown that psychological safety could be a mediated variable to discuss innovation behavior. Wong, A. et al. (2010) have done a research and found that psychological safety plays a mediating effect in the relationship between leadership values and learning [
Hypothesis 4: Psychological safety plays a mediating role in the relationship between mentoring and innovation behavior.
To countries, power distance can be thought as a cultural context factor when doing researches [
According to cognitive appraisal theory, personal traits such as values would affect one’s cognitive appraisal and affect one’s behavior [
To people with high power distance orientation, people would show more respect, dependence and loyalty to authority, which prefer the leader style that leaders directly tell them how to do, but not for giving their chances to try or think by themselves [
Hypothesis 5: Protégés’ power distance moderates the positive relationship between mentoring and innovation behavior in such a way that the relationship will be stronger for protégés who are lower rather than higher in power distance.
Based on the analysis of precious researches, we put forward the researching framework among mentoring, innovation behavior, psychological safety and power distance orientation. As we can see in
Knowledge is the foundation to innovation, and innovation is motivation to develop. As the value of knowledge is mainly instantiated in tacit knowledge, it is important for enterprises to increase the amount of tacit knowledge and apply it. Mentoring is one of typical models to implement knowledge socialization, which is given serious attention by scholars and entrepreneur. However, most of the researches of mentoring are used western samples. It is doubt whether some existent researches would not be available in other culture scenes. In the research, we mainly use literature research method to do the study. Research results have indicated that mentoring is positively related to innovation behavior, in which perceived psychological safety plays a mediating role and power distance orientation plays a regulating role. What’ more, protégés’ power distance moderates the positive relationship between mentoring and innovation behavior in such a way that the relationship will be stronger for protégés who are lower rather than higher in power distance. If all these hypotheses are true, enterprises implement mentoring in different cultural country, should adjust measures to local conditions. For example, for an IT company in China, if the company implements mentoring in order to encourage employees to share knowledge and innovate, it should choose the protégés of low power distance orientation, who prefers to this kind of management style. By learning from mentors, protégés feel psychological safety and are more willing to come up with new ideas and express their ideas. At the same time, the companies would create a freedom atmosphere by adjusting management system, in which employees feel that is safe to make risk and more willing to innovate. What’s more, enterprises arrange training and coaching should take employees’ power distance orientation into account, and different people may be suitable for different training style and leader style. At last, the limitation of the paper is without using empirical research method to verify hypothesis, and we will do that in the future.