The role of job satisfaction in mediating the effect of transactional leadership and organizational commitment on intention to stay

This study aims to investigate the effect of transactional leadership and organizational commitment on intention to stay mediated by job satisfaction at PT X and PT Y. This is an explanatory study using a quantitative approach with saturated sampling, where all members of the population are used as research samples. The questionnaire was distributed to employees of PT X and PT Y with a total of 122 respondents. Data collection in this study was collected using a questionnaire distributed in person and using Likert scales to test the instrument. The data obtained were analyzed using Partial Least Square (PLS). The results revealed that transactional leadership and job satisfaction had a positive and significant effect on the intention to stay, while organizational commitment had a positive and insignificant effect on the intention to stay. The results also show that job satisfaction mediates the effect of transactional leadership and organizational commitment to intention to stay. The findings of this study suggest that leaders at PT X and PT Y need to increase the role of transactional leadership and the company needs to pay more attention to the factors that affect employee job satisfaction. © 2023 by the authors. Licensee SSBFNET, Istanbul, Turkey. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).


Introduction
Companies that engage in various business activities require resources to ensure their success.Capital, employees, materials, and machinery are all resources required by the company.Employees are an important resource for the company because they have the talent, energy, and creativity required to achieve its objectives.Human resources in the company must be properly managed in order to support the organization's business.However, suppose the human resources in the company are not managed properly, one of the losses experienced by the organization is a decrease in employee performance to employee turnover.Employee turnover in a company results in several losses, including costs for recruiting and training new employees as well as waste of overtime and supervision costs.In addition, there are non-financial costs, such as loss of productivity and decreased service quality (Asmara, 2017).
Companies that want to compete globally are required to strive to improve the quality of employee performance.Employees who deliver high-quality results are expected to stay with the company.This is because employees with a strong desire or intention to stay are a great advantage that can be an investment in a company.The intention to stay of employees in a company is critical to the company's continuity.The intention to stay reflects an employee's commitment and willingness to continue working.The desire to stay is influenced by various things, such as personal characteristics, organizational employee roles, company facilities, employee turnover opportunities, and work (Surantoro & Solichin, 2020).In addition, Kemie & Purba (2019) also revealed the reasons that make employees have the intention to stay, namely pride in the organization, competent supervisors, fair and attractive compensation, a culture of appreciate and respect, and interesting and meaningful work.
The success of a company is influenced by several factors, the most important of which is the cooperation between superiors and subordinates.Cooperation between superiors and subordinates will be established if the needs of both parties are met, and this can be seen based on the leadership style carried out in the organization.Leadership behavior displayed by a leader, if it is perceived as good and pleasing to employees, will affect and have a better impact on employee performance (Kamal et al., 2019).Leadership can create comfort at work, fostering a sense of satisfaction.Aga (2016) states that transactional leadership is an exchange process based on fulfilling contractual obligations, usually setting goals and monitoring and controlling results.Transactional leadership is also often applied to industries that are settled or, in other words, industries that do not require rapid change.The more satisfied employees are with their work, the more they will increase their intention to stay in the company.
Job satisfaction influences retention intentions (Wang et al., 2012).Employees who are assigned tasks based on their interests report higher levels of satisfaction and a stronger desire to continue providing services in the short and long term.Employee commitment can influence both high and low retention intentions (Vecina et al., 2012).However, Putra (2012) found that job satisfaction and organizational commitment had no effect on intention to stay.Organizational commitment to a company is one of the guarantees for the company's continuity (Sidartha & Margaretha in Wahyudi & Sudibya, 2016).Employees with high levels of work commitment tend to stay with the organization for a long time and contribute to high levels of productivity (Ingsih et al., 2021).Employee commitment to the company does not just appear; there are factors that influence it, such as working time, justice, job security and comfort, individual financial income, financial income from work groups, and desired physical working conditions (Putra & Indrawati, 2018).Tillama & Wirawan (2021), the employee turnover rate at one of the ground handling service provider companies in Indonesia is very high, reaching 197 people at a percentage of 28% in 2020.A similar finding was made by Hermawan et al. (2017), who conducted research at PT X, one of the ground handling service providers at Ngurah Rai International Airport in Bali, and discovered that the percentage of employee turnover in 2014 increased by 9.7% compared to the percentage in 2012, which was 8.6%.The same thing happened at Juanda International Airport.The growing number of passengers is inextricably linked to the relaxation of domestic travel requirements and rules in all modes of transportation, including aviation.
Juanda International Airport is one of the airports that provides various airport services, one of which is ground handling services, which serve the needs of aeroplanes, passengers, baggage, and cargo while on the ground.In this study, the selected PT X and PT Y are warehousing, baggage, cargo, and airport postal services companies that collaborate to handle some of the largest domestic and international airlines at Juanda International Airport, including Garuda Indonesia, Citilink, Saudia, Singapore Airlines, Malaysia Airlines, and others.Based on preliminary observations, many employees believe that company compensation is still inadequate, as is the lack of recognition from superiors.Furthermore, employees complain about facility issues; the distance between the office for daily attendance and the field as a workplace is quite long.As a result, negative reactions such as increased absenteeism, sloppy work, rule violations, and a desire to change jobs may occur.Furthermore, in connection with government regulations that have granted the freedom to travel by airplane in 2022, it is based on PT Angkasa Pura I data that the realization of the most extra flights was occupied by Juanda International Airport, which was 239 extra flights.As a result, these two businesses have irregular working hours.As a result, when many airline flight routes begin, employees must be able to work on an uncertain schedule, and the number of people needed to handle passenger and cargo baggage loading and unloading is growing.These factors could contribute to the drop in employee retention.Employees who want to change jobs, as well as employees of PT X and PT Y, are unavoidable in an organization.The findings of previous empirical studies explain and highlight inconsistencies or research gaps regarding the effect of transactional leadership and organizational commitment on the intention to stay with job satisfaction as a mediating variable.Transactional leadership has a significant influence on employees' intentions to stay with the organization, according to Sobaih et al. (2020).The findings of Ene's research (2020) also show that transactional leadership has a significant effect on employee intention to stay in insurance companies in Port Harcourt.The findings of Irwansyah et al. (2018) and Suhendra (2021) research also show a significant relationship between transactional leadership and intention to stay.This is inversely proportional to the findings of Othman & Lembang (2017), who found that transactional leadership has a negative impact on employee retention.Employee commitment, according to Agus and Selvaraj (2020), has a positive influence on the intention to stay.In contrast to the findings of Krismonika and Dwiatmadja (2020) and Saraswati et al. (2023), who found no evidence of a partial relationship between organizational commitment and intention to stay.
Based on the phenomenon and research gap described above, the purpose of this study is to determine the role of job satisfaction in mediating the influence of transactional leadership and organizational commitment on intention to stay.

Intention to Stay
The intention to stay refers to employees' long-term commitment to the organizational Johari et al. (2012).The intention to stay reflects an employee's commitment to a company.According to Eddy et al. (2012), intention to stay is the attitude shown by employees to be bound and survive in the organizational where they work despite attractive offers elsewhere.Personal characteristics, characteristics related to roles in the company, company facilities, opportunities for employee turnover, and the characteristics of the work itself, all influence intention to stay in the organizational (Castle et al. in Kemie & Purba, 2019).Employee loyalty to the organizational will be affected by the level of job satisfaction of employees towards their work environment and work.The higher the level of employee loyalty, the more at ease they will feel and the greater their commitment to the organizational.Employees who receive rewards in accordance with expectations will undoubtedly feel more valued and more inclined to stay with the organizational for a longer period of time.

Transactional Leadership
Burns defines transactional leadership as a type of relationship that exchanges these positions or tasks in Risambessy & Wairisal (2021).Transactional leadership exists as a reciprocal process or exchange between leaders and employees based on the quality of employee work, in which leaders will provide both financial and non-financial rewards to employees if employee performance meets or exceeds the company's expectations, and leaders will punish employees who perform below company standards.Transactional leadership that implements a fair and transparent reward system can improve the relationship between employees and the organization.Employees are more likely to stay with an organization if they believe the organization values their contributions.Transactional leadership has a positive and significant effect on intention to stay, according to Irwansyah et al. (2018), Sobaih et al. (2020), and Ene 2020.Based on some of the preceding research, it is suspected that transactional leadership has a significant influence on intention to stay.

H1:
Transactional leadership has a positive and significant effect on intention to stay.

Organizational Commitment
Organizational commitment according to Greenberg & Baron in Sari (2018) is the level at which individuals identify and are involved in their organization, which is indicated by employees with their attitude towards the organization and the desire not to leave the organization.Surantoro & Solichin (2020) show that organizational commitment has a significant relevance to intention to stay.The higher the employee expresses his commitment to the organization, the higher the employee's desire to stay in the company.Agus & Selvaraj (2020) show that employee commitment has a positive structural effect on intention to stay, which implies that individuals who are committed to the organization show less intention to leave.Based on some of the research above, it is suspected that there is a significant influence of organizational commitment on intention to stay.

H2:
Organizational commitment has a positive and significant effect on intention to stay.

Job satisfaction
Locke in Pitasari & Perdhana (2018) defines job satisfaction as a state of happy emotions or positive emotions that come from an assessment of one's work or work experience.An ever-increasing level of job satisfaction will reduce a person's desire to move to another workplace, and vice versa.Research by Abualrub & Alghamdi (2012), Chen et al. (2016) and Bell & Sheridan (2020) state that a person will decide to stay in the company where they work influenced by a high and increasing sense of satisfaction in their work.Leaders guide or motivate employees towards set goals by clarifying roles and tasks.Lumbantoruan et al. (2020); Lan et al. (2019) show that transactional leadership style has a positive effect on employee job satisfaction.Strong organizational commitment provides individuals with a sense of stability, meaning, and certainty in their work, which in turn contributes to increased job satisfaction.Loan (2020) organizational commitment increases job satisfaction, thus providing additional support for the positive relationship between organizational commitment and job satisfaction.The results of this study are supported by research conducted by Thet & Wai (2018); Al-Najjar & Jawad (2020) which revealed that with increasing organizational commitment, the level of job satisfaction also increases.

H3:
Transactional leadership has a positive and significant effect on job satisfaction.

H4:
Organizational commitment has a positive and significant effect on job satisfaction.H5: Job satisfaction has a positive and significant effect on intention to stay.
The better the application of transactional leadership through indicators of contingent reward, management by exception (active), and management by exception (passive), the higher the level of job satisfaction of company employees (Irwansyah et al., 2018).This study is supported by Nurlina's research (2022), which shows that transactional leadership has a significant positive relationship with job satisfaction.As a result, when employees are more satisfied with their jobs, they are more likely to stay.Furthermore, job satisfaction has a positive effect on the intention to stay Mehrez & Bakri (2019).Employees who share values are more likely to be committed and loyal, to try harder, to improve employee performance and job satisfaction, and to maintain a competitive advantage.Hiola & Hanurawan (2022); Dwiyanti & Bagia (2020) explain how good organizational commitment can affect employee job satisfaction.As a result, it will encourage employees to work harder in order to increase employee job satisfaction.

H6:
Transactional leadership affects the intention to stay through the mediation of job satisfaction.

H7:
Organizational commitment affects the intention to stay through the mediation of job satisfaction.

Methodology
This study employs an explanatory research approach to objectively test the theory by testing the relationship between each variable using statistical procedures and a quantitative approach.Employees from PT X and PT Y made up the population in this study, totaling 122 people, with details from PT X totaling 108 people and details from PT Y totaling 14 people.This study employs a saturated sampling method, in which the entire population of the study is used as a sample (Ferdinand, 2014).The sample size for this study was 122 employees.The data for the study was collected using a questionnaire distributed in person.In the questionnaire submitted, a Likert scale is used to determine the extent to which respondents give their opinions according to a predetermined scale.The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling partial least squares (SEM-PLS).The reason for using PLS data analysis is that the concept is to test the modified results of several research models to provide an overview of the variables under study (Ghozali & Latan, 2015).

Finding and Discussion
PT X is an airport-related company that provides warehousing and cargo loading and unloading services, airport post, ground handling, aviation security, and HR services.Furthermore, PT Y is a company that has been in operation since 2006 and provides cargo freight forwarding services.This company also handles ground transportation at Juanda International Airport.PT X and PT Y collaborate to handle the loading and unloading of passenger baggage and cargo for some of the largest domestic and international airlines at Juanda International Airport, including Garuda Indonesia, Citilink, Saudia, Singapore Airlines, Malaysia Airlines, and several others.The respondents had the following characteristics: According to the table 1, the majority of respondents who work at PT X and PT Y are between the ages of 20 and 29, with a percentage of 46.7% indicating that the majority of employees are of productive age and compatible with field work.Furthermore, the majority of employees at PT X and PT Y are high school/vocational high school graduates (68.8%), indicating that the fields of work at PT X and PT Y do not necessitate special skills or qualified knowledge, allowing the majority of employees to be high school/vocational high school graduates.Furthermore, in terms of length of service, it shows that 39,3% of respondents who are employees at PT X and PT Y have worked for <1 years, indicating that employees who have not worked for a relatively long time can affect the intention to stay.

Measurement Model Analysis
To test the quality of the data, this study uses convergent validity and discriminant validity tests.Individual reflective measures are said to be high if they correlate above 0.7, but for initial research from the development of measurement scales it is considered sufficient if the loading factor value is 0.5 to 0.6 (Ghozali & Latan, 2015).In more detail, the results of the validity and reliability tests can be seen in Table 2 below.  2 shows that the loading factor value (convergent validity) of each item is greater than 0.5, indicating that each item in Transactional Leadership, Organizational Commitment, Job Satisfaction, and Intention to Stay is valid.As a result, it is concluded that all items in each variable accurately and precisely performed their measuring functions with the SmartPLS measuring instrument.3 above, it can be concluded that the data used in this study are reliable.The threshold value for reliability is 0.70 (Ghozali & Latan, 2015).In Table 4 it can be seen that each variable has a Cronbach's alpha value greater than 0.6 and composite reliability value greater than 0.7.So that the items used in this study are reliable.The Q2 test yields a Q2 value of 0.995, indicating that this research model has predictive validity.Transactional Leadership, Organizational Commitment, and Job Satisfaction are 99.5%, while the remaining 0.5% is the contribution of other variables that are not part of this research model.The Goodness-of-Fit test aims to evaluate the precision of a research model constructed from all research variables.Based on the results of GoF calculations, it produces a value of 0.739, so the structural model of this study generally has predictive solid properties.The Goodness of Fit (GoF) above shows that the model in this study is robust enough that hypothesis testing can be done.

Hypothesis Test
This study examined the direct influence test and the mediating influence test hypothesis.The objective of the direct effect test is to evaluate the effect of Transactional Leadership, Organizational Commitment, Job Satisfaction, and Intention to Stay.The following are the results of the test of the hypothesis: Based on the direct hypothesis test results in Table 4 above, it shows that H1, H3, H4, and H5 are accepted because they have a pvalue < 0.05, t-statistic > 1.96, and have a path coefficient that is in accordance with the hypothesis.Meanwhile, H2 has a p-value > 0.05 and t-statistic value < 1.96, so it can be said that H2 is rejected.5 above explains that the indirect test or mediation role of job satisfaction between the transactional leadership and intention to stay has a positive and significant effect (β = 0,362, t = 5,636 p < 0.05), so hypothesis 6 is accepted.In addition, job satisfaction between the commitment organization and intention to stay has a positive and significant effect (β = 0,251, t = 4,112, p < 0.05) so hypothesis 7 is accepted.It can be concluded that hypothesis 6 and 7 in the study are accepted.This can be interpreted that job satisfaction can mediate between transactional leadership and organizational commitment on intention to stay.
Transactional leadership can increase employee intention to stay.Employees are motivated to stay in the organization as long as the organization reciprocates in desirable ways, such as acceptable rewards and fulfillment of training and development obligations (Sobaih et al., 2020).Transactional leadership is measured using three indicators (Jensen et al., 2016), namely contingent rewards, active control, and passive control.Transactional leadership shows a fairly high average value, which indicates that employee perceptions of transactional leadership applied at PT. X and PT.Y are good.Employees have a desire to stay at their current place of work in any situation.The findings of this study are supported by research by Ene (2020), Irwansyah et al. (2018), Sobaih et al. (2020), andSuhendra (2021), which shows that there is a positive and significant relationship between transactional leadership and intention to stay.Thus, it can also be seen that the practice of transactional leadership has an impact on employee intention to stay.
Organizational commitment has a positive and insignificant effect on the intention to stay.This means that organizational commitment cannot directly increase the intention to stay of employees at PT X and PT Y.This means that the high or low level of organizational commitment of employees at PT X and PT Y has no impact on the desire of employees to stay at the two companies.In line with Paré & Tremblay's (2007) research conducted on 394 Quebec members of the Canadian Information Processing Society, it failed and showed that organizational commitment has no influence on the intention to stay.The results of this study are in line with the results of research conducted by Krismonika & Dwiatmadja (2020) and Saraswati et al. (2023), which show that there is no partial influence between organizational commitment and intention to stay.
Transactional leadership has a positive and significant effect on job satisfaction.This condition shows that transactional leadership is proven to be able to increase the satisfaction of employees at PT X and PT Y. Leaders at PT X and PT Y can appreciate employee performance by supervising them to prevent mistakes that will occur, making employees feel more cared for.Employees have high job satisfaction if the leader can show a transactional leadership style, one of which is by giving bonuses if employees reach the target that has been set so that employees are motivated to work well.Salary or promotion will also make employees feel satisfied working for an organization or company.This research is in line with the results of research by Lumbantoruan et al. (2020), which shows that there is a positive influence between transactional leadership style and job satisfaction at UD. X in Medan.In addition, this research is also supported by the research of Dzakpasu et al. (2022) and Nurlina (2022), which show positive results between transactional leadership style and job satisfaction, namely that the higher the independent variable, the higher the dependent variable, and vice versa.
The results of this study prove the theory of organizational commitment put forward by Luthans in Indrasari (2017), where organizational commitment can affect employee job satisfaction and has a relationship with the level of employee job satisfaction.This research is supported by Loan's (2020) research, Thet & Wai (2018), which states that organizational commitment increases job satisfaction, thus providing additional support for the positive relationship between organizational commitment and job satisfaction.These findings are also supported by Al-Najjar & Jawad's (2020) research, which reveals that as organizational commitment increases, the level of job satisfaction also increases.So that organizational commitment can be developed gradually over time through the creation of an organizational culture that fosters values among organizational members to produce high levels of job satisfaction.
This shows that the relationship between employees and leaders is very important in increasing job satisfaction because attention, advice, assistance, and good communication from leaders to employees will make employees feel like an important part of the organizational.When the level of employee job satisfaction increases, it will reduce a person's desire to move to another workplace, and vice versa.This also proves the statement of McCarthy et al. in Cowden & Cummings (2012), which states that job satisfaction is a consistent predictor of intention to stay.This research is supported by the research of Abualrub & Alghamdi (2012), Chen et al. (2016), andBell &Sheridan (2020), which state that a person's decision to stay in the company where they work is influenced by a sense of high and increasing satisfaction with their work.
Job satisfaction is able to mediate the effect of transactional leadership on the intention to stay.The results of transactional leadership on job satisfaction and job satisfaction on intention to stay show significant results.The direct effect of transactional leadership on intention to stay shows significant results, so based on these results, it can be concluded that the role of job satisfaction in this study is a partial mediation.This proves that the influence of transactional leadership can increase the intention to stay of PT X and PT Y employees, with or without involving job satisfaction.The findings of this study are supported by previous research, namely Irwansyah et al. (2018), Lumbantoruan et al. (2020), andNurlina (2022), which show that there is a significant relationship between transactional leadership and job satisfaction.Research conducted by Bangwal & Tiwari (2019) and Sudibjo & Suwarli (2020) shows that there is a significant influence between job satisfaction and the intention to stay.
The direct effect between organizational commitment on intention to stay shows insignificant results, so based on these results it can be concluded that the role of job satisfaction in this study is as a complete mediation.This proves that the influence of organizational commitment can increase the intention to stay of employees of PT X and PT Y by involving job satisfaction.Organizational commitment can help increase employee job satisfaction because it creates an extraordinary level of motivation for employees to give their best effort to take advantage of the opportunities provided by the organization.Shared values make employees feel comfortable working, have commitment and loyalty to the organization, make employees try harder, improve employee performance and job satisfaction, and maintain a competitive advantage.If organizational commitment increases and job satisfaction also increases, then the intention of employees to stay at PT X and PT Y will also increase.The findings of this study are supported by the research of Dwiyanti & Bagia (2020) and Hiola & Hanurawan (2022), which show that there is a significant relationship between organizational commitment and job satisfaction.In addition, it is also supported by Bang's research (2015); Chen et al. (2016) show that there is a significant influence between job satisfaction and intention to stay.

Conclusions
Based on the results of research and discussion of the role of transactional leadership, organizational commitment, and job satisfaction on intention, it can be concluded that transactional leadership can increase employee intention to stay at PT X and PT Y.However, organizational commitment has not been able to increase employee intentions to stay.This means that the high or low level of organizational commitment that exists among employees has little impact on their intention to stay.Transactional leadership and organizational commitment are able to increase employee job satisfaction.Job satisfaction is able to increase the intention to stay of employees of PT X and PT Y.This shows that the higher the level of employee satisfaction in the organization, it will be followed by the increase in intention to stay.Job satisfaction can bridge the variables of transactional leadership and organizational commitment to the intention to stay.This research makes theoretical contributions by bolstering previous theories and research, and applicative research is extremely beneficial to PT X and PT Y.The limitation of this research is that it only covers two companies located at one airport in Indonesia, so the results of this study have a low level of generalization.Future research is expected to compensate for this shortcoming by including more variables and conducting additional research to enrich literacy in human resource management and organizational behavior.Also, future research is expected to increase and develop a wider scope of research objects so as to perfect this research.Furthermore, this research looks at organizations that provide transportation services; further research could look at the manufacturing or banking industries.

Figure 1 :
Figure 1: Conceptual Model of the Study; Source: Authors 2023

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. Test Results; Source: Processed Primary Data 2023 Coefficient of determination (R2), predictive relevance (Q2), and goodness of fit (GoF) values are used in structural model (inner model) testing to determine a model's suitability.The test results for the intention to stay coefficient of determination (R2) are 0.926.This value proves that the independent variables can affect Transactional Leadership, Organizational Commitment, and Job Satisfaction 92.6%.

Table 3 :
Reliability Analysis

Table 4 :
Direct Effect Test Results

Table 5 :
Indirect Hypothesis Testing