The Mechanism Of Newcomers Mentor Network Construction And Its Impacts:a Longitudinal Study

With the rise of knowledge economy, human resources have become the most important factor of production. Enterprises gradually shift the focus of the competition on the talent. The competition for talents became increasingly firerce. Newcomers, as a special enterprise staff group, are the reserve force of enterprise development. Their abilities, skills and knowledge will be important elements in the core competitiveness of enterprises in the future. However, newcomers likely to have anxiety and insecurity, which means that they often need some time to adapt to the new environment. In this phase, the factors contains measures which taken by organization and the influence of colleagues and leadership will promote or hinder the process. As an important tool for the development of human capital, mentor network has attracted wide attention on theoretical and practical circles at home and abroad. Mentoring is helpful for newcomers (proteges) to increase their socialization and career successes through providing career support, psychosocial support and role modeling.Although previous research has made great progress during the past thirty years, there are still some omissions. First of all, most previous researches were lack of integrated perspective. Most studies were from a single perspective, ignored the community’s complexity. Study from the network perspective is more realistic. Secondly, previous empirical studies usually used cross-section data, which will only be able to verify the correlation between variables. This will limit the causality between variables. Finally, we still know little about the mechanisms and process by which mentors exerts their influences on proteges’ outcomes, the effectiveness of mentor network remains to be further tested. Accordingly, this paper examines the antecedents and consequents of mentoring in the Chinese context and also aims to provide some implications for newcomers and organizations.This dissertation consists of seven chapters and could be summarized into four parts:introduction (chapter1), literature review (chapter2), empirical study (chapter3,4,5,6) and implication (chapter7). Specifically, this research examined the antecedents of mentoring in chapter4, and the mechanisms by which mentor network affects proteges’ career success in chapter5, the mechanisms through which mentor network influences proteges’ social capital in chapter6. Main conclusions are following:(1) This study analysis the factor of the newcomers’ mentor network. Firstly, organizational and individual social tactics both have a significant positive impact on the mentor network. Moreover, emotional stability and self-monitoring have the moderating effect on the relationship between the individual socialization tactics and mentor network.(2) This research verify that newcomers’ mentor network have a significant positive effect on career success. In addition, this study reveals that the social network density plays the moderate role between the mentor network strength and career satisfaction.(3) This research proves that the newcomers’ mentor network has a significant positive effect on the social capital, and social networks’ quality play the partial mediation role between this relationship.The innovation of this study can be summarized as follows:(1) From the traditional concept of a single "mentor" to development to "mentor network", based on China’s workplace, with newcomers as the observation object, this research reflect the dynamic characteristics of the mentor network adopting longitudinal research paradigm through multiple point data.(2) This research explore the influence of organizational and individual socialization on mentor network structure and function, and the self-monitoring and emotional stability will paly a moderator role in the formation mechanism of mentor network.(3) This research test "mentor network"’s role in career success as a "leader-driven" mechanism, and this role will be effected by external environmental factors (social network density).(4) This research indicates that the relationship between newcomers’ mentor network and social capital in the social network perspective, and proposed a new theoretical perspective and interpretation mechanisms.Finally, we draw a conclusion and proposed the research limitations and directions for the future study.