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Exploring the antecedents of employees’ developmental network characteristics: does context matter?
Author(s) -
Lee Jeong Won
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
asia pacific journal of human resources
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.825
H-Index - 33
eISSN - 1744-7941
pISSN - 1038-4111
DOI - 10.1111/1744-7941.12145
Subject(s) - context (archaeology) , psychology , empirical research , organizational culture , knowledge management , business , marketing , social psychology , management , economics , computer science , paleontology , philosophy , epistemology , biology
Reflecting today's turbulent business environment, mentoring research has broadened its focus from traditional dyadic relationships to developmental networks. Drawing on developmental network and social information processing theory, the present study examined the effects of work context on employees’ developmental network characteristics. The multi‐level data collected from 681 employees at 42 companies in Korea provided empirical evidence of the influence of three contextual factors (industry sector, organizational culture, and HR practice). Specifically, service firms showed a positive relationship with employees’ network range and relationship strength with developers (or multiple mentors). Adhocracy culture was positively associated with the range, strength, and size of developmental networks, whereas market culture showed a negative relationship with tie strength. Finally, formal mentoring programs were found to be positively related to tie strength and negatively related to network size. These findings extend previous developmental network research by integrating contextual factors, which have thus far been neglected.