Abstract

This study is to find out an attempt to verify the mentoring role of trust between mentoring function received and work attitude. For this purpose, national and international level NGO’s working in multi-sectorial of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have been selected through stratified sampling techniques. 273 questionnaires were distributed among various employees in selected Districts. Out of which, 246 questionnaires were included for research analysis purposes. The responses of the respondents were measured through a structured questionnaire having a five-point Likert scale. Mentoring function has been found as a dependent variable, while work attitude has been termed as the independent variable. Mentoring function has been further categorized into two subclasses, i.e. career development and psychological support and work attitude have further elaborated into job satisfaction. It can be included that career support and psychological support are significant with job satisfaction, and there is a positive relationship between dependent and independent variables.

Key Words

Mentoring Function, Career Development, Psychological Support, Work Attitudes, Job      Satisfaction

Introduction

In the current scenario and global environment and competition era with the quick and fast technological changes along with limited resources, most of the organizations are searching for new methods in limited and scarce resources (Dominguez and Hager, 2013). Resultantly majority of the organizations have taken initiated to start mentoring programs. The main aim of this program is to improve their business and lead it to a higher position. Besides this, the mentoring program also helps to support the employees of the organization and also increase their performance. The aim of mentoring is the process of learning and managing the major organizational changes which arise with the passage of time (Kram and Hall, 1996). In the mentoring process, the most senior and well-experienced person acts as a mentor and trained other staff members of the organization through which the mentor, protect, guide and support the junior employees to expose their skills to achieve the desired goals and objectives of the organization in a better way (Akarak et al., 2008; Pembridge et al., 2011; Rhay et al., 2010). Kram (1985) noted various kinds of mentoring functions, some of these are psychological and support functions; these functions also confirmed by different other researchers (Erdem et al. 2008; Young et al., 2004; Ragin et al., 1999; Mullen 2000; Luna and Gullen, 1998; Johnson and Cervero, 2004; Jacobi, 1991; Davis, 2005). 

In mentoring, that knowledge can be shared through which the strategic gain or knowledge can be achieved by an organization, and this strategic knowledge can be obtained by sharing the know-how from the most senior and experienced members of the organization. By acquiring this knowledge, the new learner can enhance their skills, knowledge and abilities. Besides this, by applying these competencies in their practical life and organization, positive change will soon occur. This positive change can also be termed as career development, and through this career development, promotion and development of the individual and also of the individuals can be held at (Conway et al., 2002). Mentoring is a long time process of managing the progression via learning, leisure as well as work for the purpose to touch the high destination (Career Industry Council of Australia, 2007). Mentoring process will show good results when the mentoring culture and structure are coupled. In mentoring culture, there is a learning environment; by observing other behavior one can get more knowledge and in mentoring culture, mentoring implement in a sound, complete and careful method (MacArthur and Pilato, 1995). Through communicating network, administrating facilities and training, empowers mentors to enhance mentor relationships. Zachary (2007) suggested four characteristics that will fruitfully implement mentoring culture in any organization. These four characteristics/traits are clarity, feedback, ownership and flexibility. 

Besides this, in mentoring culture, well-planned strategies are implemented in such a scientific manner in order to carry out all the designed parameters in an organization, whether from bottom to upper level or from upper to lower side in a lithe environment. Through this, it will help to mentor and assist in the process of evaluation as well as benchmarking. It also gives a source for feedback and also helps in clarifies roles, aims, and an individual’s responsibility along with expectations and accountabilities (Koberg et al., 1998; Doolittle et al., 2013; Opper and Lyons, 2004, Bally, 2007). Mentoring is structured also support the link between individual personal career and award related Human Resources (HR) process (Swart et al., 2003; Viator, 1999). Young and Perrewe (2000), Murphy and Ensher (2000), Emmerik (2008), and Akarak & Ussahawanitchakit (2008) have explained the outcomes of mentoring program; they further added that variables which have strengthened the relationship had been a shortage from the research perspective which needs more elaboration. Hence the current study enables us to find those variables that can affect more strong the relationship between the process that will also help and support in raising up the career and other nearer outcomes. The more explanation has been narrated as under. Literature has also been evaluated as the next chapter along with objectives and hypotheses were also developed. The methodology has also been discussed in the next chapter, along with analysis and recommendations.

Literature Review

Hansford et al.(2003) observed that majority of the organizations had changed the trends to institutionalizing mentoring due to not of the received benefits. Besides, this mentoring process also have effects on performance and also quantity and quality. This also leads towards improving the graph and shows efficiency as well. Hence, it can be said that mentoring can be used as a tool for human resource interventions, with the basic objective is to socialize the new entered employees in the organization. During this process, seniors employees of the organization tend to collectively combine the skills and knowledge that can be enhanced (Burger et al., 2009).

The mentoring function plays a key part in career development for employees working in an organization. Mentors are those individuals who have advanced and rich experience and having comprehensive knowledge. Mentors are committed to providing learning materials through which mobility of the individual can be increased and also develop the individual (Hunt and Michael, 1983; Kram, 1985). The mentor can also support their followers by providing various types of functions and behaviors, skills related to career development through which individuals take to support and groom the organization. The mentor also provides psychological functions through which an individual professional growth and personal development could be increased (Kram, 1985). In the presence of a mentor, an organization will lead the positive way (Dreher and Ash, 1990; Scandura, 1992). Training received by mentee normally has more chances of promotion and high resources of income (Chao, Walz and Gardner, 1992 and Dreher and Ash, 1990; Whitely, Dougherty and Dreher, 1991), and having more mobility (Scandura, 1992) with more satisfaction in their career (Fagensom, 1989), than those employees who did not receive mentoring process in their entire life. Another aspect of the mentoring process is organization socialization which is also a positive impact (Ostroff and Kozlowski, 1993), with high job satisfaction (Koberg, Boss, Ringer and Chappell, 1994) and turnover intention is also being decreased (Viator and Scandura, 1991). 

Many organizations in the region also recognize the contribution of mentoring in development. The head of the organization tries to replace the informal mentoring process with formal mentoring programs (Burke and McKeen, 1989; Zey, 1985; Boyle et al., 1995). The key difference between informal and formal mentoring processes is that, that informal mentoring process the organization assistance is based on the mutual characteristics of both individual .i.e mentor and mentee, while an informal mentoring relationship the relationship between these two are spontaneously (mentor and mentee). Another difference between formal and informal mentoring relationships is that they is of time duration. Informal mentoring, the time duration is short, while in informal mentoring, the time duration is long (Douglas, 1997). In some organizations, the effect of a formal mentor is highly appreciable that informal relationships (Kram and Bragar, 1992), while implicitly offer their employees in a formal relationship while a substitute offer during the informal mentoring relationship (Keele, Buckner and Bushnell, 1987), besides this ratio execution of the formal mentoring process, is more than informal mentoring process.

Theoretical Framework



Methodology

Population and Sampling 

For this research, the researcher selected all levels of employees working in National and International Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) working in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Those NGO’s were selected whose performance is better in various sectors. Besides this, NGO’s that is established beyond ten years shows that on the developmental side, they have good experience and a good reputation as well. Based on their performance, these organizations also have potentials in Human resources as well. For research purposes, it’s very difficult for the researchers to gather and analyze desire data from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, so the researcher selected six NGO’s based on their performance as the accessible population. Four national levels NGO’s are selected, while two international level organizations have been selected. National level organizations, namely are Sarhad Rural Support Program (SRSP), Centre for Excellence for Rural 

Development (CERD), Khwendo Kor (KK) and Peace organization, while from international level United State Agency for International Development (USAID) and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugee (UNHCR) are selected. Due to financial resources and time constraints, it seems very difficult for researchers to collect data from all NGO’s working in Pakistan, so only those national and international level organizations have been selected from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK). All seven divisions of KPK, including Peshawar, Kohat, DI. Khan, Bannu, Mardan, Hazara and Malakand Division are selected as it is accessible and approachable for the researcher. In these seven divisions, further districts have been identified as all sub-offices are situated. These Districts are selected for a population of current research. Data collected from all those individuals who are making decisions in their concerned organization for research purposes.

In a current research study, methodology for the selection of a sample from the target population is a stratified sampling technique. Through stratified random sampling, a sample size of 273 was selected. We received 246 usable responses from the respondents. 

Results

Table 1. Reliability Coefficients

Scale	N	Alpha Coefficient
Cognition Based Trust	5	.790
Job Satisfaction	4	.796
Mentoring Function Career Support	03	.734
Mentoring Function Psychological Support	03	.620

 




The table reported above represents the reliability statistics of the study variables. As the value of Cronbach’s alpha of all variables are above the standard value of 0.60, indicating that the scale used by the current research is reliable.




 

Regression Results

Regression Analysis of Career Support and Job Satisfaction

Table 2. Model Summary

Model	R	R-Square	Adjusted R- Square	Std. The error of the Estimate	Durbin-Watson
1	.768	.590	.588	.619	1.65

Predictor: (constant), Career Support Dependent Variable: Job Satisfaction

 




The above table presents a regression analysis model summary between mentoring function career support (MFCS) and job satisfaction (JS). As highlighted in the above table, 0.768 is the value of R, which indicates the correlation between MFCS and JS. R-square (R²) value is .590 which indicates, that our predictor MFCS explains that about 59% variances are occurring in the dependent variable, i.e. Job Satisfaction (JS). Durbin-Watson value in the above-mentioned table is 1.65. Said value also falls in the acceptable limit and satisfactory range, which is from 1.50 to 2.50 suggested by previous researchers. Hence, our data in the said research study are free from the autocorrelation problem.




 

Table 3. Coefficient

Unstandardized			Standardized
Model	Coefficient	Std. Error	Co-efficient	t	Sign
(Constant).	1.131	.139		8.125	.00
MFCS	.714	.039	.768	18.49	.00

Dependent Variable: Job Satisfaction

 




Table 3 shows regression coefficients of study variables Mentoring Function Career Support (MFCS) and Job Satisfaction (JS). As shown, the t value is 18.49; besides this, the p-value is also significant. Start from this Thus, the value of “t” is well above the accepted value of +-1.96. Thus, based on the above results, we can say that Mentoring Function Career Support is significantly and positively related to job satisfaction. The unstandardized regression value of the coefficient is .714, which highlighted that per unit change occurred in researcher model-independent variable will carry-out a positive change will occur at the rate of .714 units change in the Job Satisfaction (JS), which is the dependent variable.




 

 

Regression Analysis of Psychological Support and Job satisfaction

Table 4. Model Summary

Model	R	R-Square	Adjusted R- Square	Std. The error of the Estimate	Durbin-Watson
1	.719	.517	.515	.672	1.841

Predictor: (constant), Psychological Support, Dependent Variable: JS

 




The above table presents a regression analysis model summary between Mentoring Function Psychological Support (MFPS) and Job Satisfaction (JS). As highlighted in the above table, 0.719 is the value of R, which indicates the correlation between Mentoring Function Psychological Support and JS. R-square (R²) value is .517, which states that our predictor Mentoring Function Psychological Support explains that about 51% variance is occurring in the dependent variable, which is Job Satisfaction (JS). The value of Durbin-Watson in the above-mentioned table is 1.841. Said value also falls in the acceptable limit and satisfactory range, which is from 1.50 to 2.50 suggested by previous researchers. Hence, our data in the current research study are free from the autocorrelation problem.




 

Table 5. Coefficient

Unstandardized			Standardized
Model	Coefficient	Std. Error	Co-efficient	t	Sign
(Constant).	.804	.180		4.464	.00
MFCS	.780	.049	.719	15.963	.00

Dependent Variable: Job Satisfaction

 




Table 5 shows regression coefficients of study variables Mentoring Function Psychological Support (MFPS) and Job Satisfaction (JS). As shown, the t value is 15.963 beside this; the p-value is also significant. Start from this Thus; the t value is well above the accepted value of +-1.96. Thus, based on the above results, we can say that Mentoring Function Psychological Support is significantly and positively related to job satisfaction. The unstandardized regression value of the coefficient is .780, which indicates that per unit change occurred in the researcher model, the independent variable will carry out a positive change will occur at the rate of .780 units change in the dependent variable Job Satisfaction (JS).




 

Moderation Effect of Cognitive Based Trust on the Relationship between Mentoring Function Career Support (MFCS) and Job Satisfaction (JS)

 

Table 6. Model Summary

R	R2	MSE	F	df1	df2	p
.8	.6	.3	221.5	3.0	236.0	.00

 




The above-mentioned table shows the model summary of the moderating effect of Cognitive Based Trust (CBT) on the relationship between Mentoring Function Career Support (MFCS) and Job Satisfaction (JS). As highlighted that the “R²” value is .6, which specifies that in our model, the used independent variable explains 60% variance in Job Satisfaction which is our dependent variable. Besides this “F” value is 221.5, and the p-value is .00, which is also strongly significant and resultantly shows that our model is fit.




 

Table 7. Coefficient

Model	co-effi	se	t	P	LLCI	ULCI
Constant	3.60	.10	64.60	.00	3.50	3.70
CBT	.40	.10	4.90	.00	.20	.50
MFCS	.50	.10	7.40	.00	.30	.60
Int_1	.00	.00	0.50	.60	.10	.10

 




Table 7 reported highlighted the moderation analysis of current study variables. As shown, Cognitive Based Trust (CBT) and Mentoring Function Career Support (MFCS) are significantly related to Job Satisfaction (p> .05). However, the most significant value in the above table is the “p” value of an interaction effect (int_1). Here in the current scenario, the “p” value is insignificant, and hence we can simply say that our moderator didn’t moderate the relationship between our selected independent and dependent variables. Here in the case of an interaction effect, the p-value is insignificant (t = 0.5, p =.6), which indicate that our moderator Cognitive Based Trust not moderated the relationship between Mentoring Function Career Support and Job Satisfaction.




 

Moderation Effect of Cognitive Based Trust on the Relationship between Mentoring Function Psychological Support (MFCS) and Job Satisfaction (JS)

 

Table 8. Model Summary

R	R2	MSE	F	df1	df2	p
.8	.6	.4	159.1	3.0	236.0	.00

 




The above-mentioned table shows the model summary of the moderating effect of Cognitive Based Trust on the relationship between Mentoring Function Psychological Support (MFPS) and job satisfaction (JS) as highlighted thatR2value is 0.6, which specifies that the independent variable used in our model explains 60% variance in job satisfaction which is our dependent variable. Besides this F value is 159.1, and the p-value is .00, which is also strongly significant and resultantly indicates that our model is fit.




 

Table 9. Coefficient

Model	co-effi	se	t	P	LLCI	ULCI
Constant	3.50	.10	64.60	.00	3.40	3.60
CBT	.50	.10	6.60	.00	.40	.70
MFCS	.40	.10	5.00	.00	.30	.60
Int_1	.10	.00	3.80	.00	.10	.20

 




Table 9 reported highlighted the moderation analysis of current study variables. As shown, Cognitive Based Trust (CBT) and Mentoring Function Psychological Support (MFPS) are significantly related to JS (p> .05). However, the most significant value in the above table is the “p” value of an interaction effect (int_1). Here in the current scenario, the “p” value is significant, and hence we can simply say that our moderator moderates the relationship between our selected independent and dependent variables. Here in the case of an interaction effect, the p-value is significant (t = 3.8, p =.0), which indicate that our moderator Cognitive Based Trust (CBT), moderated the relationship between Mentoring Function Psychological Support and Job Satisfaction.

Conclusion

The topic that was selected for the research dissertation was the mentoring role of trust between mentoring function received and work attitudes. For this purpose, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa area was the researcher population; area, however, various National Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) and International Non-Governmental Organizations were working in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa were selected as organizations from where data were collected from various employees and employers.

After data collection, various statistical methodologies were adopted for the analysis. Various statistical techniques which were used are normality; Multicollinearity, Homoscedasticity, Heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation were used for the data. For normality of data, the researcher used Kurtosis and Skewness, histogram and PP plot. After that, for checking of Multicollinearity researcher applied VIF and tolerance test, and from the result of these techniques, it has been ensured that in our data, there is no issue of multicollinearity. Through the Durbin Watson method, autocorrelation was also analyzed, and from the result, it was found that no, there is no issue of autocorrelation.

For a collection of data from various employees working in National and International NGO’s proper questionnaire was adopted and used.  In our model, dependent, variable and independent variables were analyzed. In the current research study, Mentoring function has been found as a dependent variable while work attitude has been termed as the independent variable. Mentoring function has been further categorized into three subclasses. These three subclasses are career development, psychological support and role modelling, and work attitude, have further elaborated into job satisfaction and the organization's commitment. 

We found that both mentoring function dimensions, career support and psychological support have a positive and significant relationship with job satisfaction. Furthermore, it is also found that cognitive-based trust moderates the relationship between the independent study variables and dependent variables. Thus, it is concluded that organizations should try to support employees in their career path and also give them psychological support in order to improve their job satisfaction level. A lot of studies found that employees who were satisfied with their jobs are more productive as compared to those who were less, thus improve the overall performance of the organization. 

Recommendations

Based on the findings, one can implement the result in the following ways;

a. By implementing the results of the current study, one can increase the productivity of the organization.

b. Any head of the organization can use the results to maximize the efficiency of their employee in the organization.

c. Employee job satisfaction could be enhanced by providing career support in the organization.

d. Employee job satisfaction could be enhanced by providing psychological support in the organization. 

Limitations and Future Areas for Research

Although, the study in hand contribute to the existing body of knowledge regarding mentoring function and their impact on organizational commitment and job satisfaction, however, there are potential limitations as well that must be considered for future endeavor. First, the sample of the current research is comparatively small, i.e. 257 and only from non-profit organizations. It will be better to select a large sample from the diverse nature of organizations to generalize the results. Second, the study collects the data from the respondents’ one, i.e. means that it was cross-sectional in nature. For the generalizability of the results, it is recommended that future researchers may use longitudinal research design to get accurate responses. Third, the target population was only those NGOs that were operated in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which may bias the results. Future researchers may collect the data from other areas of the country. Lastly, this research was conducted in Pakistan. Future researchers may repeat the same nature of study in other context.

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