Hospitality employees promotional attitude: Findings from graduates of a twelve-month management training program

Mentoring is considered an important human resources training program but is seldom discussed as an internal marketing tool in the hospitality management literature. This study, using a major hotel company's formal mentoring program, empirically tested mentoring's influence on employee's promotional attitude. Employee psychological contract theory provided the theoretical foundation for the study. The proposed research model was tested using Partial Least Squares (PLS) SEM. The results showed that mentor functions (i.e., career development and psychosocial support) were antecedents of employee promotional attitude. In addition, employee's psychological contract breach and employee's affective organizational commitment were mediators between mentor functions and promotional attitude, with affective organizational commitment showing a full mediation effect. These results provide both theoretical and managerial implications and offer opportunities for future research.