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Previously submitted to: Journal of Medical Internet Research (no longer under consideration since Sep 16, 2019)

Date Submitted: Sep 12, 2019

Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.

The Impact of Transformational Leadership on Employee retention: Role of Organizational and Communication

  • Shuja Iqbal; 
  • HongYun Tian; 
  • Shamim Akhtar; 
  • Sikandar Ali Qalati

ABSTRACT

Background:

Employee retention has been studied by researchers in relation to many factors. Cost of losing talented employees in much higher than recruiting and training the new ones. Past studies have shown abundant research and importance of chosen variables in different relationships. This study is unique in terms of studying the mediating role of organizational citizenship behavior and moderating role of communication in the selected model.

Objective:

This study investigates the impact of transformational leadership on employee retention in SMEs. Furthermore, this study examines the mediating role of organizational citizenship behavior and the moderating role of communication.

Methods:

Based on random sampling, 505 employees from SMEs were selected to response the constructed questionnaire. Smart PLS structured equation model (PLS-SEM) was used to estimate the various relationships.

Results:

The findings of the study reveal that there is a positive and significant relationship in transformational leadership and organizational citizenship behavior. Similarly, this study found positive and significant relationship in organizational citizenship behavior and employee retention. In addition, organizational citizenship behavior had a positive mediating effect on the relationship between transformational leadership and employee retention. Furthermore, communication positively moderates transformational leadership, organizational citizenship employee retention relationships.

Conclusions:

This study examines the mediation of organizational citizenship behavior and the moderation of communication which have been less studied in the literature. Findings revealed that transformational leadership and communication plays a significant role in relation of organizational citizenship behavior and employee retention. As such, management of SMEs need to pay particular attention to these variables, to retain employees for enhanced productivity and organizational growth.


 Citation

Please cite as:

Iqbal S, Tian H, Akhtar S, Qalati SA

The Impact of Transformational Leadership on Employee retention: Role of Organizational and Communication

JMIR Preprints. 12/09/2019:16243

DOI: 10.2196/preprints.16243

URL: https://preprints.jmir.org/preprint/16243

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