Two Faces of Leadership: Transformational and Abusive Pathways to Job Satisfaction, Affective Organizational Commitment, and Turnover Intentions

Leadership styles play a critical role in shaping employees' work attitudes and intentions to remain with their organizations. This study examines how transformational and abusive leadership relate to turnover intentions, with a focus on how job satisfaction and affective organizational commitment mediate these relationships. Survey data were collected from 304 employees across diverse Portuguese organizations, using validated measures of leadership styles, job satisfaction, affective organizational commitment, and turnover intentions. Using serial multiple regression analyses with bootstrapping procedures, transformational leadership was positively associated with job satisfaction and affective organizational commitment and negatively associated with turnover intentions. In contrast, abusive leadership showed the opposite pattern of associations. Job satisfaction and affective organizational commitment were negatively related to turnover intentions and were identified as key attitudinal intervening variables in the associations between leadership styles and turnover intentions. Overall, the findings highlight contrasting associations between positive and negative leadership styles and key employee attitudes and turnover intentions, underscoring the importance of job satisfaction and affective organizational commitment for understanding employee retention in organizational contexts.