How does mentoring influence protégés’ work engagement? Roles of perceived organizational support and family-like employee-organization relationship

Purpose Drawing upon organizational support theory and family-like exchange perspective, this paper aims to investigate whether mentoring influences protégés’ work engagement, and the roles of perceived organizational support (POS) and family-like employee-organization relationship (FEOR) between mentoring and protégés’ work engagement. Design/methodology/approach Matched data were collected from 290 protégés and their mentors in two large state-owned enterprises in Northwest China. Multiple regression analyses and bootstrapping methods were used to test the hypotheses. Findings The results show that mentoring is positively related to protégés’ work engagement, and POS and FEOR play multiple mediation roles in the relationship between mentoring and protégés’ work engagement. Research limitations/implications The primary contribution of this study is exploring the impact of mentoring on protégés’ work engagement. Additionally, this study uses organizational support and family-like exchange perspective to understand how mentoring influences protégés’ work engagement. Originality/value Despite a few studies examining the effect of mentoring on protégés’ work engagement, but focusing excessively on organizational socialization and social exchange, as such, limited attention has been given to the role of emotions. This is, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the first study to investigate the effect of emotional factors (including POS and FEOR) on the relationship between mentoring and protégés’ work engagement in Chinese organizational culture.