The authors introduce a new measure of felt obligation to mentor in order to explore generalized reciprocity in mentoring. The purpose of this paper is to explore whether felt obligation to mentor adds prediction to mentor job performance in combination with mentoring functions provided and mentor-assessed benefits and costs of mentoring.,Hypotheses were tested in a sample of firefighters in the Southwestern USA using moderated regression analysis.,Protege reported mentoring functions provided predicted mentor performance, but neither mentoring benefits nor costs predicted mentor performance. Felt obligation to mentor interacted with mentoring functions reported such that mentor performance was highest when both mentoring functions provided and felt obligation to mentor were high.,The results indicate that the new measure may prove to be of value for exploring generalized reciprocity in mentoring. Further, more research using mentoring benefits and costs is merited. Findings are limited by use of a new measure of felt obligation to mentor as well as the fact that the research was conducted in a setting in which employees were expected to serve as mentors.,Organizations may leverage felt obligation to mentor in order to support effective informal or formal mentoring relationships, whereas focusing on the benefits of mentoring may be a less valuable strategy.,The research offers a new measure to help to understand generalized reciprocity as a motivation to mentor as well as suggesting that more empirical attention should be given to the perceived benefits and costs of mentoring.

中文翻译：

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对导师的义务感在导师绩效中的作用

作者介绍了一种新的衡量导师义务的方法，以探讨导师的普遍互惠。本文的目的是探讨指导者的义务是否结合提供的指导功能以及指导者评估的指导成本和指导，增加了指导者工作绩效的预测。在美国西南部的一名消防员样本中，使用假设性的假设对假设进行了假设检验。回归分析。Protege报告的指导功能提供了预测的指导者绩效，但没有提供指导收益或成本来预测指导者绩效。据报告，对导师的义务与导师职能的相互作用使得当两个导师职能都提供且感到对导师的义务很高时，导师的绩效最高。结果表明，该新措施可能对探索指导中的普遍互惠具有价值。此外，值得进行更多利用指导收益和成本的研究。由于使用新的衡量指导者义务的手段以及研究是在预期员工担任指导者的环境中进行的事实而限制了发现。组织可能会利用感觉的指导者义务来支持有效的指导。非正式或正式的指导关系，而将注意力集中在指导的好处上可能没有那么有价值。该研究提供了一种新方法，可以帮助理解广义互惠作为指导者的动机，并建议应在经验上给予更多关注指导的感知收益和成本。