Abstract
Although mentoring has been identified as an important career resource for protégés in the Anglo-Saxon cultural cluster, pertinent research in other cultures is still scarce. The relationship of mentoring and expressive network resources with protégés' career success and emotional exhaustion was investigated in a sample of 104 Hellenes (Greek) bank employees performing frontline service jobs. The number of mentors that respondents reported they have had was related to their extrinsic career success. However, currently having a mentor was not related to intrinsic career success and was marginally related to emotional exhaustion. In contrast, the amount of expressive network resources was strongly related to both intrinsic career success and emotional exhaustion. The results are discussed with respect to extant research, the national cultural context of the study and the cross-cultural transferability of human resource systems. The general tentative conclusion is that relationships with mentors and expressive network resources appear to be important resources for employees across cultures, but the relative potency of their benefits is influenced by the national cultural characteristics.
Notes
1 Hofstede's work and model, which has been adopted in the present work, have limitations (e.g. McSweeney, Citation2002; Spector et al., Citation2001). Nevertheless, Hofstede's model is still the most established model of national culture available, with substantial support for its validity (for examples of recent studies that endorse the predictions of Hofstede's model, see Hui et al., Citation2004; Vishwanath, Citation2003); and hence, the most appropriate one to use as a tool for analysis.