The impact of leader-member exchange, employee empowerment and affective commitment on TRNC hotel and restaurant workers: Implications for retention

ABSTRACT: In order to meet with the challenges of this century which is marked with competition especially in the service industry, every organization that is found within this sector must work on recruitment, training and keeping of its employees which are the key themes that run through human resource management. Managers and supervisors should become aware that their managerial and supervisory roles involve both consideration for subordinates and concern for tasks. They should be aware of the dynamics in the relationships between themselves and their subordinates and the impact of such dynamics like leader-member exchange, affective commitment, employee empowerment and turnover intention on their organization. This research therefore focuses on seeing whether a relationship exists between leader-member exchange, psychological empowerment, affective commitment and turnover intention within the hotel and restaurant sector in the Famagusta Region of North Cyprus. A cross-sectional approach survey design was adopted and 106 respondents from 5 hotels and 15 restaurants filled the self administered questionnaire. A correlation design and a path analysis regression were used to establish the relationship between leader-member exchange, psychological empowerment, affective commitment and turnover intention or intention to leave. The results then showed that two of the hypotheses were supported while two were not supported. As proposed by the hypothesis, a positive relationship existed between leader-member exchange and affective commitment and between psychological empowerment and affective commitment. However, contrary to our expectations leader-member exchange and psychological empowerment did not seem to be related. In addition affective commitment and turnover intention did not seem to be related. This may be due to the study area, industry of study and imperfections on the questionnaire responses. In summary the findings of this study have implications for organizations and academic researchers. It contributes its own quota of valuable information on the relationship between leader-member exchange, psychological empowerment, affective commitment and turnover intention. Keywords: Leader-member exchange, psychological empowerment, affective commitment and turnover intention. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………