The “Ripple Effect”: The Effect of Family-Work Conflict on Mentor-protégé Relationship

ABSTRACT

Drawing from conservation of resources theory, this research examines how and when mentors’ family – work conflict is related to protégés’ work outcomes (i.e. job performance and career satisfaction). We proposed mentors’ family – work conflict depleted their resources, thus had a negative influence on protégés’ work outcomes. Further, we addressed the mediating role of mentoring functions (i.e. career support, psychosocial support, and role modeling) and the moderating roles of mentors’ core self-evaluation and mentor – protégé relational quality. We tested the hypothesized moderated mediation model using time-lagged data from 162 mentor – protégé dyads in a large Chinese pharmacy chain company. The results demonstrated that (a) mentors’ family – work conflict was negatively associated with protégés’ work outcomes; (b) mentoring functions mediated this relationship; (c) mentors’ core self-evaluation and mentor – protégé relational quality moderated the main effect of mentors’ family – work conflict on mentoring functions and the indirect effect of mentors’ family – work conflict on protégés’ work outcomes via mentoring functions; and (d) the indirect effect was significant when mentors’ core self-evaluation or mentor – protégé relational quality was low. Important implications for management research are discussed.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Author contributions

All authors contributed equally to this paper.

Data availability statement

The data used in the study will be made available by the authors upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71972144;72002110), the Key Project of the Key Research Base of Humanities and Social Sciences of the Ministry of Education (22JJD630004), and the Young Elite Scientists Sponsorship Program by CAST 2023QNRC001(YESS20230024).