MANAGERIAL ROLES OF MIDDLE NURSE ADMINISTRATORS IN BACCALAUREATE NURSING PROGRAMS (MIDDLE MANAGEMENT).
Contributors: University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Published: 1992
Number of pages: 145
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.; Health Sciences, Education.
Description: The purpose of this research was to describe and categorize the managerial roles of middle nurse administrators in baccalaureate nursing programs. Managerial roles were defined as affinity groups of activities performed by administrators who are formally in charge of organizational units. Three congruent action oriented theories, Linton's (1936) functionalist role theory, Orem's (1989) general theory of nursing administration, and Mintzberg's (1973) managerial role theory were used to form the synthesized theoretical framework for this study.

This descriptive research was implemented by mailing an investigator-constructed questionnaire for each middle nurse administrator in the 49 southern programs whose top administrators gave consent and agreed to distribute the questionnaires. Of 149 questionnaires sent to the 49 schools, 53 were returned after middle nurse administrators recorded on the questionnaires their managerial activities over a 5-day period.

A majority of the respondents (33, 62%) held doctoral degrees as the highest educational level, had been in nursing education over 10 years (47, 89%), had less than 10 years in educational administration (36, 68%), and had been in their present positions less than 5 years (30, 57%). Almost all (51, 96%) reported having faculty responsibilities.

Self-reported activities were subjected to content analysis using Mintzberg's (1973) managerial roles as the categorization scheme. Out of 1,613 reported activities, all were categorized using all of the role groupings and roles except for 74 activities which were placed in an unnamed group. The most enacted role grouping was informational (863, 54%), followed by the interpersonal (405, 25%), and then the decisional (271, 16%) groupings. The most enacted roles were spokesman (626, 39%) of the informational grouping, leader (389, 24%) of the interpersonal group, and resource allocator (211, 13%) of the decisional grouping.

Conclusions were that the synthesized theoretical framework can be used to describe, categorize, and guide managerial work, graduate curricula, and further research. Another conclusion was that the priority of role enactment differs in nursing practice and nursing education.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 53-09, Section: B, page: 4591.

Thesis (D.S.N.)--UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA AT BIRMINGHAM, 1992.

School code: 0005.