The impact of mentoring on knowledge sharing in the steel manufacturing industry

Abstract

South Africa, like many other countries, is also faced with issues such as the shortage of skilled workers or employees. The availability of the skilled workforce has decreased over the past years and will continue to decrease over next several years. In order to have a long–term sustainable competitive advantage, organisations will have to be able to retain knowledge and skills, especially when knowledgeable people are going to leave the organisation. This can be achieved by means of proper knowledge sharing and knowledge management strategies. There is little published work in the area of knowledge sharing and management in the steel–manufacturing industries. The study sets out to determine the relationships between formal mentoring, informal mentoring, knowledge sharing, organisational rewards, enjoyment in helping others and knowledge self–efficacy and also to determine whether people who have and have not experienced formal and informal mentoring experience these variables differently. A cross–sectional survey design was employed to obtain the desired research objectives. We recruited a convenience sample after permission was granted to conduct the research. Participation was voluntary and anonymously. A total of 300 participants were targeted and a response rate of 45 % was achieved. The findings indicated that people in formal mentoring program enjoy helping others; informal mentoring is positively related to organisational rewards; knowledge sharing was found to be positively significantly related to enjoyment in helping others and knowledge self–efficacy; and that people with high knowledge self–efficacy are more oriented to helping others. The t–test results indicate that there are statistically significant differences between the people who have experienced formal and informal mentoring compared to those who have not.