The effects of authentic leadership on turnover intention

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between employees’ perception of authentic leadership and their turnover intention as mediated by employees’ work-group identification (WID) and work engagement. Design/methodology/approach – Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data from 623 Spanish employees. Findings – Results show that authentic leadership has a negative effect on turnover intention and positive effects on work engagement and WID. The direct relationship between authentic leadership and turnover intention was found to be partially mediated by employees’ work engagement. Practical implications – One of the strongest implications that may be drawn from this study is that authentic leaders can influence employees’ turnover intentions by positively enhancing their engagement. Thus, the study highlights authentic leadership as a key element for retaining valuable employees through the promotion of employees’ work engagement. Originality/value – To the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to analyze the association between authentic leadership and turnover intention and the meditational effect of work engagement and WID.