Probing the impact of transformational leadership on job embeddedness: the moderating role of job characteristics

Purpose - This paper aims to evaluate how transformational leadership can increase job embeddedness in their employees that persuade them to stay in their organization and how this relationship is contingent upon the job characteristics. Design/methodology/approach - Sample of 328 useable responses was available for analysis. Questionnaires were distributed to the employees who are working in different Pakistani organizations. Regression analysis was used to test for hypotheses. Findings - The findings support that there is a significant impact of transformational leadership for shaping job embeddedness, and the results endorsed the role of job characteristics as a moderator in describing the relationship of transformational leadership and job embeddedness. Transformational leaders would motivate employees to work together in productive manners in challenging work settings. Originality/value - This paper makes three key contributions to the literature on job design. First, this inquiry shows that a strong link does exist between transformational leadership in creating organizational job embeddedness. Second, it highlights how job characteristics of highly challenging work settings may shape employees’ job embeddedness. Third, this paper offers a novel perspective in leadership research by incorporating high challenging work setting (i.e. job characteristics) as moderator. Managers may get new insight by opting for transformational leaders' attributes and concentrating on high challenging work settings for creating embeddedness in employees to prolong their stay with the job and firm.