Liu Ru

Employee turnover is an unavoidable part of business development, costing important human resources and impeding long-term growth and strategy implementation. To maintain a steady workforce, businesses must prioritize understanding and addressing this issue. The objective of this study is to examine the impact of leadership style, career development, and work stress on turnover intention in the high-tech industry and to investigate the moderating role of psychological contracts in these relationships. The sample consists of 380 employees of the R&D departments in high-tech companies in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, China, mainly engaged in the electronic information, advanced manufacturing, and automation sectors. The data were gathered via an online questionnaire, and the Smart-PLS approach was used to analyze the data. The empirical findings indicate that transactional leadership, transformational leadership, and career development are significantly and negatively related to turnover intention, whereas work stress has a significant positive effect. The psychological contract moderates the relationship between career development and turnover intention; the higher the psychological contract, the stronger the relationship. In addition, the psychological contract moderates the relationship between work stress and turnover intention, whereby the higher the psychological contract, the weaker the relationship. However, no empirical evidence suggests that the psychological contract moderates the relationship between leadership styles and turnover intention. The R² value is 0.485, indicating moderate explanatory power, and with a GOF index of 0.492, the model also demonstrates a good fit with the data. This study offers considerable implications for both theoretical and practical applications.