Linking transformational leadership to turnover intention in the public sector: The influences of engagement, affective commitment and psychological climate

The purpose of this paper is to examine how employee engagement and affective commitment mediate the relationship between transformational leadership and voluntary turnover intention. The study also investigates the moderating role of psychological climate in the relationship between affective organisational commitment and voluntary turnover intention.

This study employed a cross-sectional design as its framework. In addition, hierarchical linear modelling with bootstrapping analysis was conducted using data from a sample of 336 employees in a large public sector organisation in Ghana.

The results showed that transformational leadership positively influenced engagement, which was then negatively related to employee turnover intention. Furthermore, employee engagement was found to mediate the link between transformational leadership and affective organisational commitment, whereas both employee engagement and affective organisational commitment were found to mediate the link between transformational leadership and voluntary turnover intention. Finally, psychological climate was found to moderate the link between affective commitment and voluntary turnover intention.

Despite the practical significance of this study in lessening the turnover decision of employees, the study has some limitations. Most significantly, the sample size of this cross-sectional study was small and limited to employees from only one large public sector organisation in Ghana. Findings of this study could be generalised by using large samples from other sectors and geographical areas. Furthermore, future studies should consider positive outcomes such as OCB and innovative work behaviour to help extend our conceptual framework.

Overall, findings of this study provide tentative support to the proposition that employee engagement and affective commitment help to minimise the decision of employees to leave the organisation regardless of how they perceive the leadership style of their immediate supervisors. Most importantly, psychological climate which is referred to as individual employee perceptions of their work environment had a strong contingent effect on the negative relationship between affective commitment and turnover intention such that employees’ positive perception of the work environment weakens the link between commitment and turnover, whereas a negative perception of the working environment strengthens the relationship between commitment and turnover. As a result, employees’ positive perception of their work environment decreased their turnover intention decisions.