The relationship between transformational leadership, employee engagement and intention to quit among employees at a selected organisation

• Main Author: Swartz, Natasha Lizette
• Other Authors: Jano, Rukhsana
• Language: en
• Published: University of the Western Cape 2021
• Subjects: Intention to quit; Voluntary turnover; Human capital; Transformational leadership; Employee engagement; Vigour; Dedication; Absorption; Convenience sampling; Structural equation modelling.
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/11394/7996

Masters of Commerce === Organisations should focus their attention on strategies that mitigate the intention to quit of employees, this can be achieved through creating an environment that is favourably disposed to an efficient and engaged workforce and by driving transformational leadership approaches. Recognising the immense value of human capital and the devastating effects linked to the loss of valued employees, organisations should direct their focus on effective ways to deal with undesirable staff turnover issues. In the present challenging economic times, organisations and researchers are increasingly exploring factors that could contribute to retaining talent and improve leadership as well as employee engagement practices to optimise organisational outcomes through employees’ talent. The present study sought to contribute to existing research pertaining to transformational leadership, employee engagement and intention to quit, by observing the variables in a service sector environment. The main objective of the research study was to determine the nature of the relationships among the variables on a sample of employees at a selected organisation. An online questionnaire was sent to 296 possible respondents by means of an electronic link. Out of these, 206 questionnaires were used for analysis. Employees were selected to participate in the study by means of convenience sampling. Four questionnaires were used to gather data namely, a self-developed biographical questionnaire, the Multi-Factor Leadership Questionnaire developed by Avolio and Bass (1995), the Utrecht’s Work Engagement Scale developed by Schaufeli and Bakker (2003) and the Turnover Intention Scale developed by Roodt (2004). Statistical analysis of the data was performed by using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 26 and the LISREL 8.80 software program. Item and dimensional analyses were executed on the subscales to identify poor items and to ensure uni-dimensionality of the subscales. In order to test the hypotheses structural equation modelling was used. The multiple regression analytical technique was used to identify the variable that explains the most variance in intention to quit. The research results indicated that a positive relationship between transformational leadership and employee engagement exist. There were significant, negative relationships between transformational leadership and intention to quit and between employee engagement and intention to quit. Regression analysis indicated that employee engagement had a more significant impact on intention to quit than transformational leadership. The limitations of the study and future recommendations for the organisation are discussed.