Abstract
Purpose: This study examines how supervisor need-thwarting behaviour relates to employee turnover intentions through needs frustration, and how interactional justice and job insecurity conditionally moderate this relationship.
Design/methodology/approach: Data were collected through a two-wave survey of Australian workers (n = 359). The proposed conditional moderated mediation model was tested using Hayes' PROCESS Macro Model 11 in IBM SPSS v28.
Findings: Supervisor need-thwarting behaviour was positively associated with turnover intentions, both directly and indirectly through needs frustration. The indirect relationship was conditionally moderated by interactional justice and job insecurity. Interactional justice buffered the positive association between need-thwarting behaviour and needs frustration when job insecurity was low. This buffer was nonsignificant at average insecurity, and reversed in slope when insecurity was high, producing a significant index of conditional moderated mediation.
Originality/value: This study frames supervisor need-thwarting behaviour as an aspect of harmful leadership, and positions needs frustration as the psychological mechanism that connects supervisor behaviour with turnover intentions. Our arguments advance distinct explanatory roles for self-determination theory and conservation of resources theory, and conceptualise interactional justice as a contingent relational resource that provides a buffering capacity which is undermined by job insecurity.
Keywords
leadership behaviour, needs frustration, job insecurity, interactional justice, turnover intention, conservation of resources, self-determination theory
Document Type
Journal Article
Date of Publication
10-12-2026
Volume
47
Issue
9
Publication Title
Leadership & Organization Development Journal
Publisher
Emerald
School
School of Business and Law
RAS ID
102394
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
First Page
208
Last Page
229
Recommended Citation
Lux, A. A., Franken, E., & Plimmer, G. (2026). Supervisor need-thwarting behaviour and followers' turnover intentions: A conditional moderated mediation model. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 47(9), 208-229. https://doi.org/10.1108/LODJ-08-2024-0544