The moderating effect of organizational climate on the relationship between human resource practices, leadership style and employee intention to stay in Jordanian Public Hospitals

The shortage of medical doctors in public hospitals has become one of the phenomenal challenges facing the health sector in Jordan and how to manage their limited resources to generate desired medical care. Human resources turnover has increased in the last decades because of the wave of global job mobility across local and international sphere, Recently, there are alarming cases of brain drain from Jordan to overseas especially among professional jobs like medical Doctors. The current study sought to fill the research gap by proposing and validating employee retention model considered useful for Jordanian work environment. Applying social exchange theory and Herzberg two factors theory, this study examines the moderating effect of organizational climate on the relationship between human resource practices, leadership styles and employee retention in Jordanian public hospitals. Self- administered questionnaire was used to collect the data from medical Doctors in order to examine how organizational climate moderates the employee retention and human resource practices and leadership style in Jordanian public hospitals. Data were collected utilizing international accepted measurement tools 383 questionnaires distributed across the sampled and examined by partial least square (PLS) path analysis show all the dimensions of HR practices to be positively related to employee retention except employee engagement. For leadership styles, while transformational leadership, transactional leadership style was supported. Similarly, both variables of HR practices and leadership styles variables were moderated by organizational climate, except career development which is insignificant. The implication of these findings is more beneficial to Jordanian government by way of drawing the attention of policy makers to create work environment through adequate compensation, career development opportunities, work-life balance indices, employee engagement and combination of both transformational and transactional leadership styles at work place. These will not only retain the best brains but will also increase productivity across the country. The academics will also draw from these results as references and recommendations within the limitations of the study. Future study directions were suggested to take care of the limitations.