Agile Leadership and Perceived Career Success: The Mediating Role of Job Embeddedness

Abstract

Agile leadership is an important managerial function in which responsiveness and innovation appear to be essential elements for the long-term development and success of any business. The world has become increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) during and post COVID-19. Managers are required to possess agile leadership to facilitate their employees’ successful careers. Therefore, this study aims to find out the relationship between agile leadership and career success by examining the mediation of job embeddedness in healthcare organizations. The descriptive research design and survey method were employed in this study. The data were collected by using three scales from healthcare employees in healthcare organizations in Turkey. Hypotheses were tested using structural equation modelling (SEM). The data were analysed by using SPSS and AMOS programs. The findings of this study showed that agile leadership behaviours enhance career success. Moreover, the relationship between agile leadership and career success is mediated by job embeddedness. The role of agile leadership in promoting employees’ career success has rarely been studied in the literature. This is one of the first studies to examine the effect of agile leadership on career success along with the mediating role of job embeddedness. Healthcare managers have faced many critical challenges at their workplace during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through the lens of managing efficient healthcare organizations in many contexts, this research sheds some important light on the association between agile leadership, career success, and job embeddedness. Managers with high agility levels used strategies such as group decision making, problem solving, effective internal and external communication, and adaptation to uncertain environment in order to increase their career success.