Unraveling Mentors’ Positive and Negative Reactions to Protégés’ Taking Charge

Abstract

In the mentoring relationship, protégé proactivity is a key facilitator of mentoring support. However, we consider how protégé proactivity at work may lower mentors’ inclination to share knowledge. Drawing on and extending social perception theory and envy subtypes theory, we build a contingent dual-path model to theorize that a proactive protégé who takes charge at work may elicit mentor knowledge sharing or hiding through mentor benign or malicious envy, depending on the protégé's benevolence. Specifically, mentors are more likely to feel benign envy toward taking-charge and benevolent protégés, enhancing their knowledge sharing. Taking-charge protégés seen as less benevolent may encourage malicious envy in the mentors, leading them to hide knowledge. Findings from a multi-source, two-wave survey of the data of 187 mentor–protégé dyads in China (Study 1) and a pre-registered scenario-based experiment of 404 participants in the United States (Study 2) support our predictions. This research advances our knowledge of mentoring, envy, and proactivity, and provides practical implications to enhance the effectiveness of mentorship programs.