Citation

Saleh, Tajneen Affnaan (2024) Ethical leadership impact on Malaysian Small and Medium Enterprises employees' turnover. PhD thesis, Multimedia University.

Full text not available from this repository.

Abstract

Employees’ high emotional exhaustion and turnover intention are found to be prevalent among employees working in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) of Information, Communication, and Technology enterprises (ICT) of Malaysia, but their association has been found to be limited in relation to certain leadership styles. Despite the abundance of study on ethical leadership, little is known about how this leadership style explicitly influences employee turnover intention behavior. In light to this, the purpose of this research, is to investigate the influence of ethical leadership in determining the organizations’ individual-type ethical climate (self-interest ethical climate, friendship ethical climate, and personal morality ethical climate) and integrate its relationship to employees’ emotional exhaustion in reducing employee turnover intention. In addition, this study investigates the potential mediating roles of the individual type ethical climates and the employees’ emotional exhaustion that contributed to the decision-making process of turnover intention. Building on three theories, i.e., social learning, social exchange, and conservation of resources theories, outcomes from 308 employees working full-time in SMEs of ICT sector were analyzed in structural equational model PLS-SEM and IBM SPSS. The findings demonstrated that ethical leadership style is an effective way to reduce the turnover intention among Malaysian employees. Surprisingly, regardless of the fact that emotional exhaustion is a significant factor in turnover intention, this behavior was found to be fully mediated in the association between self-interest ethical climate and turnover intention. The relationship between ethical leadership and turnover intention is partially mediated by friendship ethical climate and personal morality ethical climate. These findings have several implications for theory and practice, suggesting approaches that could be most successful in ethically transforming the organizational ethical climate and potentially lowering employees' turnover intentions.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Additional Information:	Call No.: HF5549.5.T8 S25 2024
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Labor turnover
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HF Commerce > HF5001-6182 Business > HF5549-5549.5 Personnel management. Employment management
Divisions:	Faculty of Management (FOM)
Depositing User:	Ms Nurul Iqtiani Ahmad
Date Deposited:	30 Sep 2025 02:15
Last Modified:	30 Sep 2025 02:15
URII:	http://shdl.mmu.edu.my/id/eprint/14537

Downloads

Edit (login required)