Contribution of transformational leadership to sense of place and turnover intention of myanmar workers in Thailand: the mediating role of trust in leader and supportive diversity climate

Abstract

Myanmar migrant workers represent the major workforce for low skilled labor Thailand in numerous areas such as agriculture, manufacturing, and certain service branches such as construction and domestic work. The high turnover among these Myanmar workers is costly to the company and may lead to labor shortage. Thus, it is important for the companies to retain these workers. One of the important factors that also contributing to the attachment and commitment of migrants that still have not received sufficient attention is the concept of “sense of place” (SOP). Given that there was no study on the determinants of SOP that migrant employees exhibit in the work context, this study filled the gap by targeting on the SOP of Myanmar migrant workers toward their workplace. Also, this research filled the research gap by providing new evidence about the role of transformational leadership of top management and workplace climate which were antecedences of SOP toward the organization. The first objective of this study was to investigate the relationship between SOP and turnover intention by using the case of Myanmar migrant workers in Thailand. Another objective was to investigate an antecedence of SOP by focusing on the role of transformational leadership of top management. In addition, trust in leader and the supportive diversity climate were proposed as the mediators to explain the association between transformational leadership and SOP. Data was collected from 736 Myanmar employees from two manufacturing plants. The results from the partial least squares regression revealed that the Myanmar migrant workers with strong SOP tended to report having less intention of leaving the company. The results also showed the positive contribution of transformational leadership on SOP of Myanmar migrant workers toward the workplace which implied that Myanmar workers who work under the supervision of transformational leadership style of top management tend to have high level of SOP toward their organization. This association was significantly mediated by trust in leader and the supportive diversity climate. Based on the finding, the supportive diversity climate was a factor that explained why those Myanmar migrant workers who perceived their leaders as having transformational leadership quality developed strong SOP toward their workplace. Lastly the finding provided evidence supporting the idea that the trust in leader was a factor that explained why Myanmar employees that worked for the company managed by a transformational leader were likely to develop strong SOP toward their workplace.​