Does formal mentoring impact safety performance? A study on Chinese high-speed rail operators

Area of Science:

• Organizational Psychology
• Human Factors Engineering
• Transportation Safety

Background:

• Mentoring is a recognized developmental tool in organizations.
• The specific pathways linking formal mentoring to safety performance remain unclear.
• Understanding these mechanisms is crucial for safety-critical industries.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the mediating roles of self-expansion and self-efficacy in the formal mentoring-safety performance link.
• To examine the moderating influence of power distance orientation on this relationship.
• To provide empirical evidence within the high-speed railway context.

Main Methods:

• Utilized paired data from 421 protégés and 102 mentors in China's high-speed railway sector.
• Employed statistical modeling to test a sequential mediation and moderation model.
• Based the theoretical framework on self-expansion theory.

Main Results:

• Formal mentoring positively correlates with individual safety performance.
• Self-expansion and self-efficacy sequentially mediate the positive impact of mentoring on safety.
• High power distance orientation weakens the association between formal mentoring and self-expansion.

Conclusions:

• Formal mentoring enhances protégés' safety performance through psychological mechanisms.
• Self-expansion theory provides a valid framework for understanding mentoring's benefits.
• Organizational culture, specifically power distance, influences mentoring effectiveness, offering practical insights for safety management.