Impression management tactics of protégés and mentors’ knowledge-sharing behavior

Given its contribution to organizational knowledge management, a mentoring program is considered to be beneficial for knowledge sharing within organizations. However, little is known about how this benefit occurs. Therefore we conducted an empirical study of protégés’ impression management tactics and mentors’ knowledge sharing with 209 people employed by organizations in China and obtained the following findings: (a) Protégés’ mentor-focused and self-focused tactics were positively related to mentorship quality, whereas their job-focused tactics were unrelated to mentorship quality; (b) mentorship quality was positively related to the mentors’ knowledge-sharing behavior, and (c) the relationship between the protégés’ mentor-focused tactics and mentors’ knowledge-sharing behavior was mediated by mentorship quality, as was the relationship between the protégés’ self-focused tactics and mentors’ behavior. The implications and limitations of the study are discussed, and directions for future research are suggested.