Teacher’s withdrawal behavior: examining the impact of principals’ innovative behavior and climate of organizational learning Rima’a Da’as and Abeer Watted Department of Education, Al-Qasemi Academic College of Education, Baqa-El-Garbiah, Israel, and Miri Barak Faculty of Education in Science and Technology, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel Abstract Purpose – The study aims to test an innovative model that explores the direct and indirect relationships between principals’ innovative behavior, climate of organizational learning and a teacher’s intent to leave his or her school and take a voluntary absence. Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected from a survey of 1,529 teachers from 107 Arab elementary schools randomly selected from the database of the Israeli educational system. To test the proposed multilevel model, we conducted multilevel structural equation modeling (ML-SEM). Findings – The analysis confirmed that organizational learning climate is a prominent mediator between principals’ innovative behavior and a teacher’s intent to leave and his/her voluntary absence. Originality/value – This research advances our understanding of leaders’ innovative construct in an educational context and adds to the body of research directed at identifying administrative support and work- related factors that may negatively relate to a teacher’s absenteeism or intent to leave and are amenable to leadership intervention. Keywords Innovative behavior, Organizational learning climate, Teacher's intent to leave, Voluntary absence, Withdrawal behavior Paper type Research paper Introduction A teacher’s intent to leave and absenteeism are considered withdrawal behaviors (Shapira- Lishchinsky and Rosenblatt, 2010). Withdrawal behavior has been found to be related to teachers’ reduced effort at work (Shaw et al., 2005), leading to lower school standards and increasing the pressure on other teachers (Shapira-Lishchinsky and Rosenblatt, 2009). Researchers have argued that withdrawal behaviors be viewed as a syndrome (e.g. Shapira- Lishchinsky and Rosenblatt, 2010). Teachers’ withdrawal behavior, which includes intention to leave and absent is becoming a primary target of school administrators because of its considerable cost to human resource management (Shapira-Lishchinsky and Rosenblatt, 2009). Studies have indicated a link between the way in which teachers perceive their school leaders and their withdrawal behavior (Qadach et al., 2019; Da’as et al., 2019; Shapira- Lishchinsky and Raftar-Ozery, 2018). For example, teachers who were more likely to leave were found to be less likely to have a principal who created an environment that helped them exercise their potential as teachers (Markow and Pieteres, 2009); conversely, highly rated principals succeeded in retaining high-performing teachers (Shapira-Lishchinsky, 2012). Teacher’s withdrawal behavior No potential conflicts of interest was reported by authors. Funding: This research with no funding. The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at: https://www.emerald.com/insight/0951-354X.htm Received 28 December 2019 Revised 9 March 2020 Accepted 21 April 2020 International Journal of Educational Management © Emerald Publishing Limited 0951-354X DOI 10.1108/IJEM-12-2019-0449