Editorial Board

A Refereed Monthly International Journal of Management

Role of Managerial Leadership in Predicting Turnover Intentions of Academicians Working in Private Universities

Dr. Gagandeep Kaur

Associate Professor,

Chandigarh University, Gharuan (Mohali),

Punjab, India

gagandeep.e3996@cumail.in

Rajwinder Kaur

Research Scholar,

Chandigarh University, Gharuan (Mohali),

Punjab, India

bimbrarajwinder@gmail.com

Abstract

The core purpose of the research study is to assess the relationship between managerial leadership and turnover intentions. It also emphasises to study the impact of managerial leadership on turnover intentions of academicians. The research study has used Social Exchange Theory and Human Relations Theory as a basis for the present study. The research study is being conducted on academicians working in private universities in Punjab. Data collected from respondents are analysed using SPSS software. To meet the framed objectives, correlation and regression techniques are used. The results of the study discovered that managerial leadership and turnover intentions are related to each other significantly. It further concludes that positive managerial leadership helps to reduce turnover intentions of academicians and vice-versa. It also opens the door for the long-term sustainability of private universities.  

Keywords: Academicians, Leadership, Managerial Leadership, Private Universities, Turnover Intentions.

Introduction

Like love, leadership is hard to define but it is universally desired (Klingborg, Moore and Varea-Hammond, 2006). A leadership professional, Warren Bennissaid that “leadership is like beauty; it’s hard to define but you know it when you see it” (Bennis, 1989).“Leadership is the ability to influence a group towards the achievement of goals” according to Robbins (2001).The active role of leadership can be seen in the organisation’s effectiveness, goal achievement, organisational success, profit maximisation, employee welfare and happiness. In line with the extant literature, some organisations reward leaders who are commanding, prominent and outspoken whereas others prefer leaders who are largely unseen and operate behind the doors (Yukl, 2010; Chan. 2010). This choice is totally up to the organisation but effective leadership in an organisation is key to success. Effective leadership style is characterised by visible and continuous attitude that is adaptable to adjusting conditions and shared among fellow players (Künzle, Kolbe and Grote, 2010). In today’s rapidly changing era, managerial leadership positions are playing a key role in directing and shaping the organisational structure (O’Connor, 2020). It also plays a crucial role in the success and stability of any organisation. Managerial leadership is “A Leadership that sets organizational goals, does needs analysis, sets achievable priorities including, planning, budgeting, implementing and evaluating organizational performance” (www.igi-global.com). Effective managerial leadership contributes to increased personnel efficiency resulting in a significant rise in outcomes or production (Kim & Beehr, 2017). But on the contrary, poor managerial leadership leads to a lack of cooperation, low morale, poor organisational culture and high employee turnover (Allner, 2008).

Despite getting a lot of attention from researchers, turnover/attrition is still a major concern among organisations (Masood et al., 2020).Across the industries, retaining employees is a major issue faced by the organisations since so long. When assessing the cost of replacing and the disruption of work processing, an inflated turnover rate is regarded as an acute drawback to any organisation. Losing exceptional people can undermine an organization's competitive advantage by lowering confidence among other individuals and degrading performance and effectiveness. The global issue of turnover of employees has a major harmful influence on the progress and profitability of the organisation. Several reasons influence an employee's choice to leave a job such as management, view-point and potential of employees, outside profession demands, organisational experience, job upgrading, pay remuneration, managerial leadership, supervisory support and organisational politics etc (Sulamuthu and Yusof, 2018). Retaining competent and loyal employees is essential for competitive gain for organisations (Pfeffer, 1994; Holtom et al., 2008).

The education system is the pillar of a nation’s progress and allows a nation to stand on its own feet (Khalid, Irshad and Mahmood, 2012). Those days are gone when universities were completely dependent on government funding. As the world becomes more globalised, public and private universities are competing for domestic and intercontinental students by improving their repute and rating (Othman and Othman, 2014).In an extremely competitive marketplace, it is necessary to retain or cultivate a distinct identity to gain a competitive edge (Parameswaran and Glowacka, 1995).In order to tackle some of these difficulties, private universities are rapidly being considered as alternative avenues to higher education (Banya, 2021).Due to the increasing trend of private universities, the researcher has decided to take up private universities established in Punjab for the present research study.

This integrated work adds to the body of literature in the subject of human resource management. It makes a novel contribution to the literature on managerial leadership and turnover intentions. There is barely a study in the past literature that examines the association between managerial leadership and turnover intentions in private universities of Punjab. The study's practical application is to emphasise the importance of management leadership in order to further comprehend its impact on turnover intentions. The following are the objectives/aims of the study:

• To inspect the relationship between managerial leadership and turnover intentions.
• To analyse the impact of managerial leadership on turnover intentions.

Literature Review

Theoretical Basis

The current research made advantage of “Social Exchange Theory” (SET) and “Human Relation Theory” for hypothesis development. HR policies assist in the development of long-term exchange relationships involving employers and employees is known as the "social exchange theory."It describes “social exchange comprises actions contingent on the rewarding reactions of others which over time provide for mutually and rewarding transactions and relationships”(Cropanzano and Mitchell, 2005). Employees work for the organisations in exchange for rewards as well as other compensation from the organizations (Koster, 2011).In this approach, it is considered that HR procedures will create beneficial interchange connections and management will demonstrate concern for their employees' needs (Eisenberger et al., 1986).SET seeks to define individual behaviour in societal exchange as well as varies from economic exchange theory in 2 ways: it assumes broad future expected returns with uncertainties and continuing relations rather than one-time interchange (Blau, 1964). As per the theory, if organisations accomplish this approach, employees would react with a positive attitude and improved performance (Aryee et al., 2002) or they would be ready to put in additional effort and the likelihood of leaving the organisation will reduce.

Human relations theory is one of the theories that provide conceptual justification for the relationship between social factors and human behaviour. Human relations theory emerged in the 1920s as a result of Hawthorn studies that highlighted the significance of psychological and social elements within the occupation and their impact on human behaviour (Rainey, 2003). Improved performance is likely to come from improved human relations (Perrow, 1970).The theory describes that relationships, leadership styles and attitudes all play a significant part in organisational performance. The main actors in human relation theory are employees, supervisors and organisations.

Social exchange theory and human relation theory would be applied as a basis for predicting the impact of managerial leadership on turnover intentions. The present study proposes a framework to investigate the impact of managerial leadership and turnover intentions based on this theoretical approach and the studies stated above.

Fig.1 Conceptual Framework

Managerial Leadership and Turnover Intentions

Organizational competition has intensified as a result of the current globalisation and technological advancements. Therefore, businesses are required to become more competitive and capable of dealing properly with a dynamic marketplace. Organisations must educate their leaders on how to effectively handle and lead employees (Smith, 2003).Management and leadership qualities are critical for an organisation's success (Vandergoot, Sarris and Kirby, 2019).Managerial leadership is described as the practice by which leaders affect the conduct of their followers. It is considered competent when it results in the attainment of organisational objectives (León, Burga-León and Morales, 2017).

Kleinman (2004) conducted research to examine if there is a link between managerial leadership behaviour and retention. The employee did not agree with their management when the manager show a higher mean frequency of transformation leadership characteristics. However, effective management by exception behaviours for transactional leadership styles are substantially linked to turnover. (Yun and Kang, 2018)conducted study on managerial leadership states that authentic leadership is one of the managerial leadership types that emphasises on the significant relationship among the leader with the employees of the organisation. Studies show that managerial leadership is a significant factor that influences employee turnover (Oriarewo, Agbim and Owoicho, 2013).

In different domains of industry, a study has discovered an adverse association among leadership styles and turnover intentions (Sulamuthu and Yusof, 2018). According to (Masood et al., 2020), transactional and transformational leadership styles are completely connected to organisational citizenship behaviour but laissez-faire leadership is adversely related to organisational citizenship behaviour and significantly related to employee turnover intention. Employee turnover intention exhibited no correlation with transformational and transactional leadership styles. Employee intention inside and among enterprises was revealed to be highly influenced by turnover intention. Staff duration, age, leadership style remuneration, and job requirements have all been found to have a moderate degree of variation in their explanations. In general, the organisational level has an imperative influence on the turnover intention-job attributes relationship. Employee levels, managerial leadership and remuneration are all found in the same order (Rana et al., 2021). Another study is intended to explore the impact of transformational leadership and ergonomic security on the likelihood of staying. In keeping with multiple regression findings from 178 respondents’ transformative leadership and ergonomic security were considerably positively connected to intention to stay (Zin,Pangil and Othman, 2013).

Quality care, additional effort, efficiency, work satisfaction, organisational commitment, employee intention to stay, inspiring motivation, overall well-being, gender, age, academic influences and allocated units are all directly linked to leadership style. Workplace culture, work outcomes, organisational commitment and job satisfaction have all been found as mediating or moderating linkages with leadership style and quality care. An appropriate leadership style is critical because it has the ability to increase care quality, reduce turnover, and assure a sufficient staff (Batubara, Wang and Chen, 2021). People-oriented leadership should be encouraged in organisations so as to make employees feel comfortable at their jobs. It must be encouraged and improved through training (León, Burga-León and Morales, 2017).Based on previous explanations and studies undertaken till now, following hypothesis has been formulated as follows:

H1: There is a significant relationship between managerial leadership and turnover intentions.

H2: There is a significant impact of managerial leadership on turnover intentions.

Research Gaps

The majority of studies that attempted to identify leadership and turnover intentions examined a particular component of turnover intentions in the corpus of literature as a whole. No research has been conducted on how managerial leadership affects employees' turnover intentions. Previous studies have attempted to relate several other forms of leadership to various organisational aspects, including commitment, job performance, and job satisfaction. Most scholarly publications focused on the manufacturing, healthcare, and IT industries; only a small number focused on the education industry. By investigating the connection between managerial leadership and turnover intentions in private universities in Punjab, this study aims to add something novel to the literature.

Methodology

The research is conducted using a descriptive research design. Data is collected from academicians working in private universities in Punjab using convenience sampling. The Punjab region is chosen because it is rapidly developing as an educational hub. To obtain data from academicians, a standardized questionnaire is utilised as a method of data gathering tool. The data is analysed with the help of SPSS version 22.The represented sample for the study is calculated via G*Power software. The calculated sample value using this software is 159 respondents. The questionnaire was distributed among more than 250 respondents but complete and accurate 200 responses are used in the study.

Fig. 2 Sample Size Calculation

Measures

Managerial Leadership (MI): Scale adapted from Lee and Moon (2010) to measure managerial leadership.

Turnover Intentions (TI): Scale adapted from Cammann et al., (1979) to measure turnover intentions.

The questionnaire is subdivided into two sections, the first section deals with managerial leadership and turnover intentions whereas the second section deals with demographics. All of the statements were rated on a "7-point Likert scale" that ranged between "strongly agree" to "strongly disagree."

The Cronbach’s alpha of managerial leadership (ML) was .855 and turnover intentions (TI) was .831.

Results

Description of Respondent’s Demographic Characteristics

The demographical information of the responses is shown in Table 1. 104 (52%) respondents are male and 96 (48%) respondents are females in the survey. The majority of the respondent are between the 31-40 age group (46%). In the present survey 134 (67%) respondents are Assistant Professors, 44 (22%) respondents are Associate Professors and 22 (11%) are Professors as per the designation level. 30.5% respondents are with less than 5 years of experience and 43% respondents are above 10-15 years of work experience. In the case of marital status,87.5% respondents are married and only 11% respondents are unmarried.

Table 1 Respondents’ Demographic Profile

Correlation Analysis

Correlation by Pearson is used to analyse the relation among managerial leadership and turnover intentions. Table 2 presents a correlation (-.623) among ML and TI. The value of correlation in the table is negative which represents a negative correlation between managerial leadership and turnover intentions. “If the correlation coefficient is larger than 0.8, it is termed a strong connection; if it is below 0.5, it is termed a weak correlation” (Bolboaca and Jäntschi, 2006). Therefore, -.623 is considered as a moderate negative correlation among the variables. Supportive and positive managerial leadership helps to reduce turnover intentions of academicians working in private universities of Punjab and vice versa.

Table 2 Correlation (ML and TI)

Regression Analysis

Managerial leadership is used as a predictor of turnover intentions in the formation of a regression framework. The regression coefficient value between management leadership and turnover intentions is shown in the tables below. Managerial leadership is considered an independent variable and turnover intentions is considered as a dependent variable in the study.

Regression Model: Y(Managerial Leadership) =b0+b1(Turnover Intentions)

Table 3 Model Summary

Table 3 demonstrates that managerial leadership contributes to nearly 38.8% of the variance in turnover intentions. As a result, a one-unit change in managerial leadership will result in .38 unit variation in turnover intentions.

Table 4 Coefficients

Table 4 exhibits the validity and relevance of the indicated model using the t-value and p-value (>1.96) (0.000) respectively. Managerial leadership has been shown as a predictor of employee turnover intentions.

Table 5 Hypothesis

Table 5 depicts that H2 is also supported as managerial leadership is a significant predictor of turnover intentions.

Discussions

The proposed study observed the relationship between managerial leadership and turnover intentions using a paradigm built on social exchange theory (SET) and human relation theory. In private universities, managerial leadership has been identified as a major factor in retaining efficient and dedicated academicians. The research adds a unique contribution in the field by demonstrating that management leadership significantly predicts turnover intentions. According to the research evidence, there is a substantial relationship between managerial leadership and turnover intentions, hence we fail to reject H1. Academicians receiving positive managerial leadership would develop the confidence to stay for a longer period of time. Additionally, decrease in the turnover intentions of academicians helps in the long-term sustainability of the private universities.

The findings also explain that managerial leadership has an impact on turnover intentions, hence, we fail to reject H2. As a result, private universities will be able to sustain academicians for a long period of time by establishing healthy and good managerial leadership and adopting initiatives that give support from leaders. Managerial leadership is a significant predictor of turnover intentions of employees. The results/findings of the study are quite similar to the existing available literature. Past studies also state that there is a significant relationship between leadership style and employee’s turnover intentions (Choong et al., 2012). The extant literature suggests that employee turnover can decrease if leaders demonstrate strong leadership qualities and meet the expectations of the employees (Kahumuza and Schlechter, 2008; Najm, 2010).The results conveyed by Yücel (2021), state that individuals who are assisted by the leaders are highly devoted to their employers and perform much better. Ultimately, employee turnover would go down and employee productivity and performance would increase by fostering a high-performance environment.

Study Implications

Pertaining to SET and human relation theories, the present study has both organisational and conceptual implications. Effective managerial leadership at workplaces would result in decreased academic turnover intentions. First and foremost, leader or boss must evoke an atmosphere in which individuals can readily convey their thoughts and opinions that the management understands their efforts and cares about them. Furthermore, increased efforts should be made to strengthen relations between universities, academicians and their leaders. This eventually helps to build strong relationship among the team for better understating of one's aspirations and expectations from each other. Finally, managerial leadership training programs can be conducted to significantly improve individual bond to the University for reducing turnover intentions.

From a conceptual perspective, universities that devote care to their academicians, acknowledge & recognize their efforts may persuade them to stay. Leaders must have a thorough awareness of academicians' perspectives on leadership support in order to reduce their turnover intentions. Universities should concentrate on their human resources and devise effective retention measures. The research also suggests that universities must keep their capable academicians by implementing strategies that are favourable for all such as moral support from leaders, interpersonal relations, focus on employee careers, better organisation culture, recognition to employee contributions etc. When relevant measures and methods are implemented, academicians would feel obligated to be a member of university that respect their staff members and are genuinely worried for their well-being. This would enable universities to retain competent and dedicated academicians and ultimately reduce turnover intentions.

Conclusion

The objective/aim of this paper is to assess the association between managerial leadership and turnover intentions among academicians working in private universities. Past studies have supported that there is a substantial relationship between managerial leadership and turnover intentions. By conducting this research study, it provides that managerial leadership is a significant predictor of turnover intentions. Positive and supportive managerial leadership decreases the turnover intentions of academicians that ultimately cut down the extra hiring cost of private universities. Reducing extra expenditures of private universities would help to invest funds in productive initiatives. Hence, this would bring the advantage of long-term sustainability and competitive advantage for the private universities. Since this study also highlights the importance of managerial leadership, therefore, this will enable the management of private universities to emphasize on positive managerial leadership in order to retain academicians for the distant future.

Limitations and Future Scope of the Study

Despite its useful findings, the research has certain weaknesses that pave the road for further research. Because the outcomes are drawn on original data obtained from private universities in Punjab, they might not be applicable to universities in different parts of the country. Future studies might encompass a comparison of different types of universities which would be useful in determining which type of university has reduced employee turnover intentions through managerial leadership. Future studies could be undertaken in different geographical places to ensure that the current research's findings are generalizable.

Secondary data from other universities or nations could also be used to assess the findings' reliability, consistency and universal applicability. Furthermore, because the current study looked at the impact of managerial leadership on turnover intentions, future research studies with a large sample will be able to gain a more detailed knowledge of the relationship between other aspects of leadership and turnover intentions in different areas of the economy. Future research can be conducted to look at the role of other organisational characteristics in mediating the relationship among managerial leadership and turnover intentions.

Besides this, by doing related research in both developed nations and developing nations, comparable outcomes can be produced. The study is purely descriptive; however, future work could use an exploratory research design to generate novel and further findings while assessing managerial leadership and turnover intentions.

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Web References

https://www.igi-global.com/dictionary/effective-educational-leadership-in-the-digital-age/61308