The effects of leadership styles and work environment on employee retention in Uganda’s public sector through organizational commitment

Public sector firms struggle with retaining talented staff, particularly in resource-constrained settings. The study is based on the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model and on organizational commitment and leadership theories to examine the joint influence of the work environment, affective organizational commitment, and leadership techniques on retention in Uganda’s public sector. It proposes a moderated mediation model in which organizational commitment mediates the relationship between the work environment and employee retention, and transformational and transactional leadership styles moderate this relationship. We examined 410 public-sector employees in Uganda using covariance-based structural equation modeling in SPSS-AMOS, and the findings show a positive relationship between the work environment and both affective organizational commitment and employee retention. Organizational commitment serves as a mediator between the work environment and employee retention. At the same time, there is a positive moderation of the influence of work environment on organizational commitment by transformational leadership and a negative moderation by transactional leadership.