Bridging or building walls? A multilevel approach investigating the differential impacts of mentoring on within versus between mentor-protégé group knowledge transfer

Purpose Drawing on self-categorization theory, this study aims to develop a multilevel moderated mediation model to examine the mixed effects of workplace mentoring on knowledge transfer within versus between mentor-protégé group. Design/methodology/approach This research uses a multimethod approach to test the proposed hypotheses, including two scenario-based experiments (131 and 377 participants, respectively) and a multisource time-lagged field survey (471 participants). Findings The findings verifies the differential effects of mentoring on knowledge transfer. Specifically, mentoring encourages protégés to share knowledge with other protégés within the mentee-protégé group (in-group favoritism) but hide knowledge to employees in other mentor-protégé groups (out-group derogation). The opposing results are mediated by protégé cohesion and group territoriality, respectively. In addition, organizational cooperative goals serve as boundary conditions for these effects. Originality/value This research represents a leading attempt to examine the differential effects of mentoring on knowledge transfer. By investigating within-group knowledge sharing and between-group knowledge hiding contained in mentoring relationship, this research adds novel insights to the mentoring and knowledge management literature. In addition, this research provides practitioners with managerial insights.