Power distance and mentor-protégé relationship quality as moderators of the relationship between informal mentoring and burnout: evidence from China

BACKGROUND: The topic of how to prevent and reduce burnout has drawn great attention from researchers and practitioners in recent years. However, we know little about how mentoring as a form of social support exerts influence on employee burnout. AIM: This study aims to examine the contingency side of the mentoring-burnout relationship by addressing the exploratory question of whether individual differences in power distance and relationship quality play important roles in mentoring effectiveness in terms of reducing a protégé’s burnout level. METHODS: A total of 210 employees from a technology communications company completed the survey questionnaire. RESULTS: (1) A protégés’ power distance moderates the negative relationship between mentoring and burnout in such a way that the relationship is stronger for protégés who are lower rather than higher in power distance; (2) mentor-protégé relationship quality moderates the negative relationship between mentoring and burnout in such a way that the relationship is stronger when the relationship quality is higher rather than lower. CONCLUSIONS: In sum, our results highlight the importance of studying the contingency side of mentoring effects on protégé burnout. Our findings suggest that the individuals’ different cultural values of power distance and mentor-protégé relationship quality are the boundary conditions for the mentoring-burnout relationship. We therefore suggest that research on mentoring-burnout will be advanced by considering the role of the moderating process.