Striving To Restrain Employee Turnover Intention Through Ethical Leadership And Pro-Social Rule Breaking

Abstract

The increased turnover intention of employees has always been a dilemma for organizations. This is not only affecting the working standards of institutions but is also depriving them of thequalified and talented workforce. Turnover intention can be represented as the movement of a person from an institution across its membership boundary. Talented, highly qualified and satisfied academicians are required for the prosperity of any higher education institution. If the academicians are not motivated and satisfied with the job, the working standards in the educational institutions will fall and due objectives won’t be accomplished. Ethical leadership assumes a fundamental part of decreasing turnover intentions among employees. The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of ethical leadership on employee turnover intentions through the lens of pro-social rule breaking in private sector higher education institutions of Pakistan. Correlation and regression were employed in order to test the model where survey responses were gathered from 240 academicians employed in four private sector universities of Pakistan. Results showed that there exists a negative relationship between ethical leadership and employee turnover intention and pro-social rule breaking. Furthermore, pro-social rule breaking has a positive relationship with employee turnover intention. The results of regression analysis showed that pro-social rule breaking acts as a partial mediator between ethical leadership and employee turnover intentions. Expanding on current theoretical knowledge, this study makes a significant contribution to leadership literature suggesting that firms should implement ethical leadership practices that support in reducing employee turnover intentions.