1. Introduction
In the era of rapid technological revolution and industrial transformation, enterprises are facing increasingly complex internal and external environments where the craftsman spirit is considered as a significant factor in enhancing core competitiveness and maintaining sustainable growth [
1,
2,
3]. The term “craftsman spirit”, which stems from the manufacturing industry to describe the “skilled craftsmen”, is now applied to all fields of work, implying the professionalism and mindfulness of employees who are in ordinary positions but make extraordinary achievements. The craftsman spirit can be characterized by “cognition”, “emotion”, and “will”. In terms of cognition, it refers to striving for excellence, constantly improving and innovating in work; in terms of emotion, it refers to professional identity, valuing work reputation, and professional image; in terms of will, it refers to long-termism, considering work as a long-term effort [
4]. Enterprises require craftsman spirit to overcome technical difficulties and enhance their core competence. How to cultivate the craftsman spirit of employees has attracted the attention from both practitioners and management scholars [
1,
3,
5].
As a popular talent development program, mentorship is increasingly utilized by enterprises for organizational management [
6]. A mentoring relationship refers to an interpersonal exchange relationship between a senior and a junior individual in the field of professional development, in which the senior individual with more experience acts as a mentor while the junior individual with less experience becomes a protégé [
7]. Previous research has shown the positive effects of mentoring on protégés’ job performance, career satisfaction, and career development [
6]. In addition to providing specific guidance and support to protégés in work and personal lives, mentors also pass on inner spirit, which is known as “Passing the Torch” [
5]. The cultivation of the craftsman spirit relies on emotional communication and behavioral infection between people [
4]. Scholars have explored the impacts of leadership on employees’ craftsman spirit, such as spiritual leadership and inclusive leadership [
1,
2,
8]. However, the influence of mentoring on employees’ craftsman spirit has been largely neglected. Mentorship, as a talent program, is crucial for the inheritance of craftsman spirit because mentors have a more proximate impact than leaders on employees [
9]. How does mentoring help protégés cultivate craftsman spirit? What is the intrinsic influence mechanism?
Scholars have explored much about the motivational process [
1], but the mediating variables examined do not differ from those of previous studies on the formation process of performance, satisfaction, and career development [
1,
2], which cannot reflect the uniqueness of craftsman spirit. For example, in the only study on the influence of mentoring on employees’ craftsman spirit, the researchers discussed the mediating effect of work thriving [
5]. The cultivation of craftsman spirit is essentially a process of knowledge transmission through effective interpersonal interaction between mentors and protégés [
10,
11]. This process involves the exchange of ideas between protégés and mentors regarding work-related problems, as well as self-reflection and communication between protégés and others. Deliberate practice refers to an individual’s purposeful and planned practice to improve relevant skills [
12], and related empirical studies have shown that this concept basically covers both communication and self-reflection behaviors [
13]. Therefore, we argue that protégés’ deliberate practice is the key intermediary between mentoring and craftsman spirit.
In addition, previous researchers examined the boundary conditions of mentoring on protégé career outcomes by overemphasizing the individual characteristics of protégés [
6,
9], thereby overlooking other non-mentoring behaviors of mentors. There is not only the unidirectional transmission of “teaching” and “learning” between mentors and protégés but also a mutually beneficial interaction between them, which facilitates knowledge transfer. Mentor advice-seeking behavior represents mentors seeking helpful advice from others to address problems [
14]. Protégés own other network resources except for mentorship [
15], so they may possess unique and useful information. Protégés are not merely passive learners as takers; they can also offer some novel suggestions to their mentors as givers [
16]. Mentor advice-seeking behavior reflects mentors’ approval and trust, thereby enhancing the process of knowledge transfer in a mentoring relationship [
17]. Therefore, we attempt to investigate the moderating effect of mentor advice-seeking behavior and reveal the mechanisms by which effective interpersonal interactions between mentors and protégés cultivate the craftsman spirit of protégés. Overall, we argue that mentoring has a positive effect on protégé craftsman spirit by promoting deliberate practice of protégés and that mentor advice-seeking behavior enhances this positive effect.
Craftsman spirit is shown in the employees’ refinement of the work, and individuals need to be continuously polished and refined to truly become “craftsmen”. Based on mentoring theory, this paper argues that mentoring enhances employees’ deliberate practice and thus cultivates their craftsman spirit, while mentor advice-seeking behavior strengthens this process. We intend to make several theoretical contributions as follows. First, we explore the mechanism between mentoring and protégé craftsman spirit within the context of a mentoring relationship, complementing the research on the antecedents of employees’ craftsman spirit. Second, from the process of knowledge transfer between mentors and protégés, we propose that mentoring will strengthen protégé deliberate practice and then cultivate protégé craftsman spirit, which provides a new theoretical explanation for the relevant research and extends the application of mentoring theory. Third, we highlight the double interaction between mentors and protégés by investigating the moderating effect of mentor advice-seeking behavior to examine the critical boundary conditions. The conclusion of this paper affirms the positive effect of mentoring on employees’ craftsman spirit and provides theoretical support for enterprises to cultivate craftsman spirit through a mentorship program.
3. Method
3.1. Sample and Data Collection
We used a questionnaire to collect data from employees of enterprises. To make the questionnaire sample a true mentor–protégé relationship, we used the following methods to help participants anchor their mentors in the questionnaire collection. On the one hand, in the first stage, the definition of “mentor” was provided in the guidance section, and the participants were asked to select the most impressive mentor to complete the questionnaire. On the other hand, prior to the formal measurement of the variables, all participants were required to report fundamental information about their mentors such as demographic characteristics to further anchor their mentors. We made full use of the precise distribution capabilities of the Credamo platform to deliver the questionnaire to the general employees, managers, and professionals in the enterprises. Participants with credit scores greater than 70 on the Credamo platform were selected as respondents to guarantee the survey quality of the questionnaire. In addition, screening questions were set at each stage of the survey to determine whether the responses were serious. The platform automatically rejected participants who did not pass the screening question verification and manually rejected questionnaires with substandard response quality, such as those with too short a response time or where all options were the same, to ensure the validity of the participants’ responses. All participants were paid to participate in this survey. The variables measured included mentoring, mentor advice-seeking behavior, deliberate practice, and craftsman spirit. In addition, we also measured demographic variables such as gender, age, education, position, sector, enterprise type, industry type, and relationship length.
We collected data in three stages with an interval of two weeks. In the first stage, we measured mentoring, mentor advice-seeking behavior, demographic variables, and relationship length. In the second stage, we measured protégé deliberate practice. In the third stage, protégé craftsman spirit was measured. In the first stage, we distributed 506 questionnaires and received 436 responses, with a valid response rate of 86.17%. In the second stage, the questionnaires were delivered to the 436 participants precisely, and 403 valid questionnaires were recovered, representing a 92.43% response rate. In the third stage, 370 valid questionnaires were finally recovered, with a valid response rate of 91.81%. The overall survey response rate was 73.12%. Among the participants, 59.19% were female and 40.81% were male; 41.35% were 30~34 years old; 90.81% had a bachelor’s degree or above; 92.70% were mainly general staff as well as junior and middle management; 45.68% were from the R&D sector; 62.97% were from private enterprises; 25.95% and 24.86% were from the manufacturing industry and the IT industry, respectively. In addition, the average length of the mentoring relationship was 5.05 years.
3.2. Measures
Mentoring. We mainly used the three-dimensional scale developed by Scandura and Ragins to measure mentoring [
18]. In conjunction with the common expressions in the Chinese context, we also drew on semantically related items from the scales developed by Noe [
45] and by Ragins and Macfarlin [
46]. We used nine items to measure mentoring by adopting three items for each dimension to simplify measurement.
Mentor advice-seeking behavior. Adapted from the Advice-Seeking Scale developed by Alexiev et al. [
47], we used a measure of the protégés’ evaluation of their mentors and consisted of three items.
Protégé deliberate practice. We drew on the scale developed by Unger et al. for measuring deliberate practice for business entrepreneurs [
13], which included ten activities, such as mental simulation and asking for feedback. In connection with this study, two activities that did not fit the context of a mentoring relationship were removed: firm meetings and workshops/training, and eight activities were retained to measure protégé deliberate practice in terms of both self-reflection and internalization as well as communication with others. Self-reflection and internalization include mental simulation, exploring new strategies, professional reading, and controlling/checking. Communication with others includes consulting colleagues or experts, asking for feedback, private conversation, and observing others.
Protégé craftsman spirit. We concluded that craftsman spirit includes three dimensions expressed in the cognitive dimension of excellence, the emotional dimension of professional identity, and the will dimension of long-termism, which is relatively similar to the dimensions in the scale developed by Zhao et al. [
4] to measure employee craftsman spirit; therefore, nine items were selected to measure craftsman spirit.
According to the existing research, in addition to using demographic variables such as gender, age, education, and position as control variables, we also controlled for the influence of relationship length. All measures, except demographic information, were rated on a 7-point Likert scale. Mentoring, mentor advice-seeking behavior, and protégé craftsman spirit were scored ranging from 1 (completely disagree) to 7 (completely agree). Protégé deliberate practice was scored as the frequency of occurrence of the relevant activity, ranging from 1 (never) to 7 (always). All items of each variable are shown in
Table 1.
3.3. Data Analysis
We mainly used SPSS 25.0 and Mplus 7.40 to process the data. First, we used SPSS 25.0 to test the reliability of all variables in our theoretical model and conduct descriptive statistical analysis as well as a common method variance test. Second, Mplus 7.40 software was used to test the validity of the constructs. Then, we used Mplus 7.40 software to perform confirmatory factor analysis. Third, we used SPSS 25.0 to conduct regression analysis to test the hypotheses in the study. In addition, we further tested our hypotheses about the mediation and moderation effect by using the PROCESS program.
5. Discussion
The purpose of the study was to explore how mentoring cultivates the craftsman spirit of protégés. Based on mentoring theory, we explored the mechanism by which mentoring influences protégé craftsman spirit and examined the relevant boundary condition in the context of a mentoring relationship. After analyzing the data from 370 participants, we demonstrated that mentoring had a significant positive effect on protégé craftsman spirit, in which protégé deliberate practice played a mediating role, while mentor advice-seeking behavior played a moderating role. All the theoretical hypotheses of this study are supported, which complements the existing literature on the effect of mentoring on protégé craftsman spirit and has important practical implications for the cultivation of craftsman spirit in enterprises.
Although mentoring is very beneficial for cultivating the inner career spirit of employees, previous researchers have almost neglected the significance of mentoring because they overemphasize different leadership as an antecedent [
1,
2,
48]. To fill this gap, we explored the mechanism of mentoring on protégé craftsman spirit. The results indicated that mentoring significantly and positively influenced protégé craftsman spirit, implying that employees who receive mentoring tend to increase their access to professional skills and are more likely to maintain a love for their work as well as view it as a long-term endeavor, thus forming their own craftsman spirit. This result is consistent with a previous study’s conclusion that mentors can inherit career spirit to their protégés [
5].
In addition, based on empirical analysis, we also confirmed that protégé deliberate practice partially mediated the relationship between mentoring and protégé craftsman spirit. Scholars have emphasized the significance of individual motivation to develop craftsman spirit [
48]. We argue that craftsmanship requires constant accumulation, in which the formation process is the critical intermediary. Deliberate practice reflects the process of self-reflection and internalization as well as communication with others [
13]. Some scholars have confirmed that organizational learning positively affects the craftsman spirit of employees [
48], which also reflects the formative process as deliberate practice. Moreover, we consider deliberate practice to be a better reflection of individual initiative and a more comprehensive overview of the formative process.
Finally, we considered the influence of the non-mentoring behaviors of mentors on the mechanism to examine the boundary condition [
9]. The results indicated that mentor advice-seeking behavior could enhance the positive effect of mentoring on protégé deliberate practice. When the frequency of mentor advice-seeking behavior was higher, the mediating effect of protégé deliberate practice between mentoring and protégé craftsman spirit was also strengthened. Mentor advice-seeking behavior could increase the possibility of protégés’ exchange of work skills with their mentors and could also help protégés carry out a series of self-reflective internalization processes on the relevant contents [
17,
44], so that mentor advice-seeking behavior could enhance the mediating role of the protégé deliberate practice between mentoring and protégé craftsman spirit.
Next, based on these results, we attempt to provide theoretical contributions and practical implications as well as several directions for the future.
5.1. Theoretical Contributions
First, we explore the intrinsic mechanism of mentoring on protégé craftsman spirit in the context of a mentoring relationship, complementing previous research on the antecedents of employee craftsman spirit. In existing studies, the antecedents of employee craftsman spirit focus on different leadership styles [
2,
8,
48]. For instance, inclusive leadership has a significant positive impact on the craftsman spirit of skilled personnel in the railroad industry [
2], and spiritual leadership affects employee craftsman spirit by enhancing the autonomous motivation of employees [
1]. A mentoring relationship is distinct from the supervisor–subordinate relationship [
49]. By considering the impact of mentoring on the formation of employee craftsman spirit, we enrich the research on the antecedents of employee craftsman spirit and affirm the significance of the mentoring relationship in cultivating protégé craftsman spirit.
Second, we attempt to propose an explanatory mechanism of protégé deliberate practice between mentoring and protégé craftsman spirit, highlighting the importance of protégé deliberate practice and expanding the application of mentoring theory. Deliberate practice has mostly been used in studies of athletes and entrepreneurial performance [
13,
35,
50] but is less frequently used in organizational management contexts. We introduce deliberate practice into individual organizational behavior to explain the mediating role of protégé deliberate practice between mentoring and protégé craftsman spirit. We argue that employees’ deliberate practice is an important way to cultivate their own craftsman spirit, providing a new theoretical explanation for the formation of employee craftsman spirit, thus advancing the literature of mentoring theory.
Finally, we examine the boundary condition under which mentoring influences protégé craftsman spirit, revealing that positive interaction between mentors and protégés is the key for mentors to influence protégés and achieve “Passing the Torch” [
44]. A mentoring program is effective in cultivating employee craftsman spirit. Previous studies have focused solely on the moderating effect of individual characteristics, such as protégés’ learning goal orientation [
5], while ignoring other non-professional mentoring behaviors of mentors [
6]. In this study, mentor advice-seeking behavior in the context of a mentoring relationship is included. Unlike mentoring, mentor advice-seeking behavior not only represents the trust and recognition of mentors [
51] but also provides a good opportunity for protégés to update knowledge and improve professional skills [
39], which will help form a positive interaction between mentors and protégés, thus strengthening protégé deliberate practice in his or her work and further forming protégé craftsman spirit.
5.2. Practical Implications
First, enterprises should establish a mentorship talent program and strive to maximize its effectiveness. Under the mentorship program, mentors can not only directly help protégés cultivate their craftsman spirit but also help employees develop their own craftsman spirit by reinforcing protégés deliberate practice at work. Craftsman spirit represents the realization of employees’ self-worth and is also vital for the development of the organization. Employees with craftsman spirit can help enterprises achieve sustainable competitiveness. Cultivating employee craftsman spirit as one of the goals of talent management can foster more skilled craftsmen and maximize the value of employees to enterprises.
Second, mentors should encourage protégés to deliberately practice skills such as communication with others and self-reflective internalization during mentor–protégé interactions. Moreover, mentors should also seek more advice from protégés. In addition to providing career development guidance and psychosocial support for protégés, mentors should also seek more “grounded” advice from protégés to examine and spur the protégé, which will improve protégés’ motivation, strengthen protégés’ deliberate practice, and cultivate employees’ craftsman spirit. Mentors should pay attention to communication with protégés to promote the transfer and update of professional knowledge in an invisible way, and then realize the inheritance of craftsman spirit.
5.3. Limitations and Future Research Directions
We explored the intrinsic mechanism of mentoring on protégé craftsman spirit, but there are still some limitations that need to be addressed. First, although multiple stages were used to collect data from participants, all data were obtained from participants’ self-reports, and common method bias still existed. In the future, mentor–protégé pairing could be used to collect data, thereby reducing measurement errors. Second, although the influence of both mentor’s and protégé’s behaviors on the formation mechanism of protégé craftsman spirit was considered, it only focused on the individual level and ignored the influence of organizational level factors at the workplace, which could be studied across levels in the future. Finally, the sample data collected through the questionnaire were primarily cross-sectional data, which were insufficient to explain the causal relationship; this relationship could be verified in the future using experimental methods.
Furthermore, we attempted to provide several directions for future research. On the one hand, although the three functions of mentoring have been supported by numerous scholars [
6,
9], it is necessary to consider the role of mentors in various cultures. Other forms of mentoring functions may exist in specific cultural contexts, for example, whether the nature of mentoring relationships will change in the context of a collectivist culture and what changes will occur to the mentoring function. Thus, we suggest that future research consider the impacts of cultural factors on mentors and protégés. On the other hand, the microenvironment in which employees exist influences the formation process of craftsman spirit. Deliberate practice of employees is associated with activities at work, which may vary in behavior or pattern in different sectors. For example, employees in the R&D sector may engage in more specific behaviors to implement deliberate practice. Therefore, we suggest that future research focus on the various behavioral patterns of deliberate practice in different microenvironments (e.g., sector or company).