The Relative Effect of Supportive and Transformational Leadership on Emotional Exhaustion and Turnover Intention in Front-line Homeless Sector Workers
Date
2022-09-28
Authors
Wilson, Scott
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Abstract
The front-line homeless-sector workforce provides an essential service in an often emotionally-taxing environment that leads to high turnover. However, there has been limited research focused on front-line homeless sector workers or the supervisory support needed to mitigate the stressful nature of their work. A web-based survey of front-line homeless-sector workers (n=82) was conducted to compare the relative effects of transformational and supportive leadership on emotional exhaustion and turnover intention in front-line homeless sector workers. Established and validated measures were used for each of the variables in the study; the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire for transformational leadership, the Inventory of Supportive and Unsupportive Managerial Behaviours for supportive leadership, the Maslach Burnout Inventory for emotional exhaustion, and the TIS-6 Turnover Intention Scale for turnover intention. Correlational analysis and multivariate multiple regression were used to analyze the relative effects.
It was found that although transformational leadership has a correlational association with emotional exhaustion, it does not have a significant association with turnover intention. It also does not have a predictive relationship with either emotional exhaustion or turnover intention in front-line homeless-sector workers. Supportive leadership, however, had significant correlational associations and significant predictive relationships with both emotional exhaustion and turnover intention in the respondents. Implications for homeless-serving agencies and for supervisory support for front-line homeless-sector workers are discussed.
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Keywords
Leadership, Homeless Sector, Mental Health, Emotional Exhaustion, Turnover, Supportive Leadership, Transformational Leadership, Burnout, Social Services