Employee Satisfaction, Perceived Leadership, and Employee Turnover in the Information Technology Consulting Secto

Employee turnover in the IT consulting sector is a challenge for organizations as IT consultants are not content with traditional management practices. This study identified the relationships between employee satisfaction, perceived leadership, and employee turnover intention among IT consultants in the United States. Specifically, this study analyzed how turnover intention, the dependent variable, is affected by perceived leadership and job satisfaction, the independent variables. A web-based survey was distributed to the sample population, by Qualtrics, and contained three standardized instruments: the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire 5X (MLQ 5X), the Abridged Job Descriptive Index and Abridged Job in General (AJDI/AJIG), and the Staying and Leaving Index (SLI). The sample population consisted of 271current information technology consultants in the United States currently registered in the Qualtrics database. Quality control checks narrowed the considered surveys and left 46 surveys for scoring and analysis. Analysis revealed the majority of data did not distribute normally and many instrument facets did not significantly correlate. These findings are significant as the data did not provide enough evidence to reject the null hypotheses or accept the alternative hypotheses for any of the three research questions. While inconclusive, the research supports trends previously seen in research in other fields with several relationships and notable trends present. Transformational leadership facets were shown to have positive correlations with job satisfaction facets. Transformational leadership facets were not revealed to have significant correlations with intent to leave. Many AJDI/AJIG facets significantly and negatively correlated with intent to turnover. Finally, only one MLQ 5X leadership facet significantly correlated with intent to leave.