Research in the last two decades suggests that job embeddedness may reduce employee turnover. However, little is known about whether this is the case in the hotel industry despite its high turnover rates. Besides, most studies have been conducted in the US, where the job embeddedness construct was developed and tested, suggesting the need to test the job embeddedness-turnover link in other contexts to improve its theoretical accuracy and generalisability. Additionally, while appropriate leader behaviours may enhance follower job embeddedness, empirical studies are sparse. Drawing from the Conservation of Resources theory, this study examines how transformational leaders may address hotel employee turnover by exploring organisational and community embeddedness. Following a bibliometric review of job embeddedness literature over the last 20 years and hypotheses development, data was collected from 312 hotel employees across 12 hotels in Ghana as part of a PhD project in the hotel industry. Using structural equation modelling techniques to confirm the study constructs and test the research model, the study found that at all levels of community embeddedness: high, average, and low, there was full mediation effect of organisational embeddedness on the transformational leadership-turnover relationship. Further, both transformational leadership and community embeddedness were found to positively relate to organisational embeddedness, which in turn related negatively to turnover. However, community embeddedness was not found to moderate the proposed relationship between transformational leadership and organisational embeddedness. Theoretically, this paper contributes to the development of embeddedness and turnover theory by understanding the critical role leaders play in motivating and retaining staff. The practical implications of these findings are discussed with suggestions for the hotel industry to develop better systems and incentives to retain talent.

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Keywords:	employee turnover, transformational leadership, job embeddedness, organisational embeddedness, community embeddedness, bibliometric review
Research Division:	Commerce, Management, Tourism and Services
Research Group:	Strategy, management and organisational behaviour
Research Field:	Leadership
Objective Division:	Expanding Knowledge
Objective Group:	Expanding knowledge
Objective Field:	Expanding knowledge in commerce, management, tourism and services
UTAS Author:	Amankwaa, A (Dr Albert Amankwaa)
ID Code:	149193
Year Published:	2022
Web of Science® Times Cited:	2
Deposited By:	Management
Deposited On:	2022-03-16
Last Modified:	2022-12-02
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