Does leadership lessen turnover? The moderated mediation effect of leader–member exchange and perspective taking on public servants

• Author: Saeed Siyal,Xiaobao Peng
• Published date: 01 November 2018
• Date: 01 November 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1830

ACADEMIC PAPER

Does leadership lessen turnover? The moderated mediation

effect of leader–member exchange and perspective taking on

public servants

Saeed Siyal |Xiaobao Peng

School of Public Affairs, University of Science

and Technology of China, Hefei, P.R. China

Correspondence

Saeed Siyal, School of Public Affairs,

University of Science and Technology of

China, 96‐Jinzhai road Hefei Anhui, P.R. China.

Email: saeed@mail.ustc.edu.cn

Drawing on motivated information processing theory and social exchange theory, this

research investigates the mediating effects of leader–member exchange and moderat-

ing impact of perspective taking in the relationship among transformational leadership

and turnover intentions of public servants. Using a sample of 385 respondents

from different public sectors across Pakistan, we found a negative association of

transformational leadership with the turnover intentions, which is further mediated

by leader–member exchange. Moreover, perspective taking moderated this mediating

relationship. The present research has theoretical and practical implications. In

addition, we have discussed some future directions.

1|INTRODUCTION

Turnover is a critical issue in public sector organizations at the

moment, which is a task of strategic human resource management to

maintain a productive workforce in public organizations. Turnover at

a desirable level creates incentives and provides assistance to maintain

creativity in the public sectors (Hicklin & Meier, 2008; Jung, 2012).

However, strong evidence declares that turnover in excess is detri-

mental to the performance of the organizations due to the reason that

it can interrupt service delivery and generate additional costs for

replacing the leavers (Andrews, Boyne, & Walker, 2011; Hicklin &

Meier, 2008). As the costs related to turnover have increased, many

efforts have been made to determine the underlying causes behind

this. Turnover intentions in public servants are high and solely differ-

ent from those of the business organizations due to many reasons

such as, first, in public sectors such as police, the risk is high, but the

salary and other benefits are very low as compared with the business

organizations, which tends the public servants to quit. Additionally,

the police officers of several Organization for Economic Cooperation

and Development member countries like Australia and UK, as well as

New Zealand, experience high stress because of the big workloads,

mainly due to major shift in the governance focusing on the output

and accountability (Brunetto, Teo, Shacklock, & Farr‐Wharton, 2012;

Dick, 2011; Hoque, Arends, & Alexander, 2004). Second, the career

growth opportunities are less in public sector organizations as com-

pared with the business organizations, which develop the quitting

intentions in public servants. Earlier research in the areas of applied

psychology and organizational behavior discuss and argue that there

exists a social exchange link among the employees (public servants)

and organizations based on the reciprocal benefits for both the

employees and organizations (e.g., Masterson, Lewis, Goldman, &

Taylor, 2000; Rupp & Cropanzano, 2002; Wayne, Shore, & Liden,

1997). Third, the importance of trust in leadership has long been

acknowledged by scholars for more than four of the decades, by

means of some leading explanation found in books (e.g., Argyris,

1962; Likert, 1967) as well as some empirical research papers (e.g.,

Dheurle, Mellinger, & Haggard, 1959; Read, 1962). Over this

timeframe, the trust that the individuals have in their leaders and boss

has been a key concept in all the disciplines. For example, it is one of

the key concepts in many theories of leadership: such as the transfor-

mational along with charismatic leaders develop trust in subordinates

and followers (Kirkpatrick & Locke, 1996; Podsakoff, MacKenzie,

Moorman, & Fetter, 1990). According to Avolio, Walumbwa, and

Weber (2009); Goodwin, Wofford, and Whittington (2001); Lim and

Ployhart (2004), there is a great need of research on the public sectors

in this context due to the reason that the impact of leadership

depends on context factors.

Prior research on turnover intention mainly focused on the factors

that cause the turnover intentions. According to Rao and Argote

(2006), public sector organizations endeavor to lessen their turnover

to preserve their key knowledge, decrease the expenditure of staffing

and socialization (Darmon, 1990), boost performance at workplace

Received: 9 April 2018 Accepted: 28 April 2018

DOI: 10.1002/pa.1830

J Public Affairs. 2018;18:e1830.

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1830

© 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa 1of12