<![CDATA[Background: Keeping highly qualified teaching staff demands comprehensive insight into the mental and structural drivers shaping an educator's choice to stay at their current school. While professional capability, administrative guidance, and workplace conditions are established predictors of institutional loyalty, it is still unclear how professional drive acts as a moderator within these dynamics. Purpose: The current inquiry explores the capacity of occupational motivation to serve as an interacting variable, specifically examining its influence on the pathways linking competence, leadership styles, and school climate with continuous institutional loyalty amid escalating job demands. Method: This research employed a cross-sectional explanatory design involving 250 state junior high educators in Salatiga City, Indonesia. Participants were chosen via a proportional randomized sampling approach. To gather information, we distributed standardized, independently completed surveys based on validated metrics. Responses were measured on a 5-level rating format to capture participant viewpoints. Finally, the empirical data underwent evaluation via Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). Findings: The structural model explained 76.6% of the variance in teachers’ continuance commitment. Competence, leadership, work environment, and work motivation each had positive effects on continuance commitment. However, work motivation demonstrated differential moderating effects: it weakened the relationship between leadership and continuance commitment, strengthened the relationship between work environment and continuance commitment, and did not significantly moderate the relationship between competence and continuance commitment. These findings suggest that work motivation operates as a context-dependent mechanism rather than uniformly strengthening organizational influences, highlighting its importance in developing effective teacher retention strategies.]]>
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