An analysis of the relationships between job satisfaction, leadership, and intent to leave within an engineering consulting firm

The purpose of this study was to research and examine the relationships between job satisfaction, perceived leadership, and intent to leave within an engineering consulting firm utilizing a quantitative methodology. Three instruments were used to collect data for the study. The engineering consulting firm employees' perceptions of their leaders' leadership styles were measured with the Management Leadership Questionnaire 5X Short Form rater version. Job satisfaction was measured with the Abridged Job Descriptive Index and Job in General survey and intent to leave was measured with the Staying or Leaving Index. The findings of the study indicated that employees in an engineering consulting firm perceive their leadership to be high in transformational leadership and low in laissez-faire style, which is directly related to the firm's overall high level of job satisfaction at both the facet level and overall job in general level, and low intent to leave. Both job satisfaction and perceived leadership style have linear correlations with intent to leave. For job satisfaction, the employees were very satisfied. Job satisfaction increases with tenure with the company and managers are more satisfied than non-managers; however, all groups scored as being satisfied. At the facet level of job satisfaction the facets that explain the variance in intent to leave most are work on present job, opportunities for promotion, and supervision. Satisfaction with work on present job increases with the age of an employee, and non-managers are less satisfied than managers. For opportunities for promotion, satisfaction decreases with age. For intent to leave, the engineering company has low scores (low intent to leave) across all demographics. The only statistically significant difference in means is with tenure with the company where the analysis indicates that generally, intent to leave is high with lower tenure and decreases until 20 years and then increases again. Transformational leadership and laissez-faire leadership act independently from job satisfaction in general in its association with intent to leave; however, transactional leadership (at the construct level) does not act independently of job satisfaction in general on intent to leave, and does not statistically account for any variance.