The Structural Model of Turnover Intention and Job Performance of Managers based on Mindfulness: Mediating Role of Emotional Exhaustion

The present study was conducted with an aim to develop a structural model of turnover intention and job performance of school principals based on mindfulness, with emphasis on the mediating role of emotional exhaustion in principals of second-period high schools in Esfahan. The research method was applied in nature in terms of the aim and descriptive-correlation in terms of data collection, based on structural equation modeling. The statistical population comprised 399 second-period high school principals in Esfahan and based on the table by Kergerse and Morgan (1970), with the sample size comprising 205 subjects selected by multistage cluster random method. The research instruments were the inventories for mindfulness by Truijens et al (2015), emotional exhaustion by Maslach and Jackson (1981), turnover intention by Lentz (2004), and job performance by Nguyen et al (2012). The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics (frequency, mean, and standard deviation) and inferential statistics by Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, Pearson's correlation coefficient and structural equation modeling. The findings revealed that there was an inverse relationship between mindfulness and turnover intention, and there was a direct relationship between mindfulness and job performance. There was also a direct relationship between emotional exhaustion and turnover intention, and an inverse relationship between emotional exhaustion and job performance. The results of the structural modeling equation revealed that the emotional exhaustion mediated the mindfulness and job performance of the school principals. In view of the results, it is suggested that education managers pave the ground for reduction in the turnover intention and improvement in their job performance while reducing the emotional exhaustion of managers by providing mindfulness training workshops.