Laissez-faire Leadership and Turnover: The Role of Employee’s Organizational Identity Threat

Abstract

While research has largely explored the effects of leadership on employee turnover, the mechanisms explaining the effects of passive forms of leadership, such as laissez-faire leadership, on turnover remain unexplored. As agent of liaison between employees and the organization, leaders have an important role in fostering the meaning of their employee’s membership in the organization. According to social identity theory, employees develop a sense of organizational identity based on their membership to the organization. When laissez-faire leaders do not interact with their employees and neglect them, they may threaten the value of employees’ membership in the organization, and as such their organizational identity. Thus, we introduce the construct of organizational identity threat to explain how laissez-faire leadership enhances turnover among subordinates. We specifically posited that laissez-faire leadership would relate to reduced employee psychological attachment (i.e., affective organizational commitment) to the organization, increased psychological detachment (i.e., turnover intentions), and increased likelihood of voluntary turnover through organizational identity threat. These predictions were tested in two studies using three-wave time-lagged designs. Study 1 (N = 757) found that organizational identity threat mediated the relationship between laissez-faire leadership and turnover intentions and affective organizational commitment. Study 2 (N = 731) replicated these results, while controlling for the effect of workplace isolation. Moreover, we found that laissez-faire leadership had positive indirect effect on employee actual turnover through organizational identity threat. The implications of these results for laissez-faire leadership and turnover research are discussed.