Under the drastic changes of economic environment, companies must continuously execute organizational change and business process reengineering. Talents have to face “boundryless and protean career”, and they also need to be responsible for planning individual career development. Scholars have argued that effective organizational career management (OCM) is critical and essential for talents’ successful career development. Furthermore, talents’ positive, proactive and high-involved individual career management (ICM) will have direct relationship with career advancement. Therefore, it is valuable for enterprises to consider and design talents’ OCM systems and ICM planning simultaneously.
In recent years, Taiwanese business firms actively invest in China and it has provided cross-strait talents flow and career promoted opportunities. This phenomenon also represents the importance of cross-strait talent’s career management framework in China. However, the relationship among OCM, ICM and career advancement in China still lacks of empirical study. Moreover, it is confirmed that mentoring is increasingly important on global talent’s career advancement. Based on social cognitive career theory and mentoring theory, this study adopted a paired questionnaire design for its samples. We found that mentoring plays different roles in the relationship among OCM, ICM and career advancement. First, the establishment of OCM will have positive effects on career advancement. The process of talent assessment can assist the company in understanding talents’ potential, and can provide suitable human capital deployment. In addition, OCM also convey the company’s value of emphasis on talents, and the company’s willing to assist the talents in planning their career development path. From further validation, mentoring mediates the relationship between OCM and career advancement. The building of complete career management system will contribute to the implementation of mentoring, and ultimately enhance talents’ career advancement. It means that in the level of organizational planning, the establishment of mentoring is important for talent management and promotion.
Second, this study also confirmed that ICM will positively affect the talents’ career advancement, and mentoring will moderate the relationship between ICM and career advancement. This result shows that when individuals are influenced by mentoring (such as coaching system, sponsor and assigning challenging work), they will have more career advancement opportunities. Therefore, companies should execute mentoring for new or potential employees. This practice not only can assist new employees in familiar with organizational culture and working expertise, but also can provide more opportunities for employees to expand social network and to increase the visibility and advancement. This study is expected to provide practical value for enterprises to design internal management process and mechanism.