Transformational Leadership and Meaningful Work: Building A Conceptual Model of Indirect and Direct Paths

The purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual model to examine whether the direct and indirect relationship between transformational leadership, meaningful work, work engagement, job satisfaction and intention quit exist. To achieve the aim, a review of the literature on transformational leadership and meaning in work and theorizes their relationship with employees work engagement is proposed. The underlying argument of this paper is that transformational leadership impact job satisfaction and intention to quit indirectly through the relationship between meaning in work and work engagement. This paper responds to the gaps in the literature (Zhu et al., 2009; Yukl, 1999; Avolio et al., 2004; Piccolo Colquitt, 2006) by developing a conceptual model proposing that transformational leadership relate to job satisfaction and intention to quit through a proposed indirect process, one that is based on employees’ perceptions toward themselves (engagement) and their jobs (meaning in work). This paper proposes a novel model as no research to date has proposed conceptual arguments integrating the indirect paths between transformational leadership to work related outcomes (i.e. job satisfaction and intention to quit) through meaning in work and work engagement. This manuscript recommends future research to empirically test the hypothesised model one different samples and to check it’s robustness.