From a knowledge transfer (KT) perspective, this study explores the rationale for chefs’ mentorship-based abuse in professional kitchens. Qualitative data from five hospitality firms show that such abuse among chefs is inherently related to “master/apprentice” KT practices. Essentially, the master/apprentice KT is a social exchange where the master imparts practical knowledge, and apprentices reciprocate with social rewards. However, due to the lack of monetary pricing/payment systems, participants’ agreements on knowledge exchange issues (i.e., duties, powers and benefits) are often informal and implicit, relying more on their mutual trust than the organization's managerial support. Given this, hospitality managers prefer authorizing masters to self-manage specific KT practices. Correspondingly, mentorship-based abuse becomes a prevalent mentoring strategy for masters to improve their KT performance and mentoring rewards. Overall, this study contributes to the research on mentorship-based abuse in hospitality by proposing a novel framework encompassing young employees’ apprentice learning and KT-oriented social interactions. © 2024 Elsevier Ltd
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