Supervisor need-thwarting behaviour and followers' turnover intentions: a conditional moderated mediation model

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.