ON CALL OR ANSWERING A CALLING? TEMPORARY NURSING PROFESSIONALS AND EXTRA-ROLE BEHAVIORS.
Contributors: University of Minnesota.
Published: 1996
Number of pages: 220
Subjects: Psychology, Industrial.; Women's Studies.; Health Sciences, Nursing.; Sociology, Industrial and Labor Relations.; Health Sciences, Health Care Management.
Description: This dissertation examines whether performance differences exist between temporary and long-term nurses in terms of extra-role behaviors. Extra-role behaviors are beneficial to the organization, discretionary, and go beyond existing role expectations. The most common operationalization of extra-role behaviors in the management literature is the Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) construct, a measure with five validated dimensions: altruism, courtesy, conscientiousness, civic virtue and sportsmanship. It has been assumed that OCBs are universally extra-role. This supposition is tested empirically. This dissertation examines what variables affect whether or not a worker considers an OCB to be part of the job or not, and how this in turn influences their propensity to perform OCBs.

The hypotheses were tested by analyzing the results of surveys from a sample of nurses in the upper-Midwest. Information was drawn from both a subject nurse and a peer nurse, in order to obtain both self-reported and peer-reported performance measures.

The results showed that many OCBs, in particular altruistic and courteous behaviors, were an expected part of the job for nurses. Civic virtue behaviors were less likely to be seen as part of the job. Individuals with high masculinity scores were less likely to see courteous behaviors as expected of them but more likely to see civic virtue behaviors as expected. High levels of empathetic concern and perspective taking increased the performance of many OCBs. These results support the argument that socially constructed gender roles influence how individuals perceive what is expected of them on the job in a gender-dominated occupation.

Finally, differences emerged between temporary and long-term nurses. Temporary nurses had smaller perceived job breadths (i.e., the number of OCBs that they considered part of the job was smaller) and, for the most part, reported performing fewer OCBs, including sub-role behaviors from the sportsmanship dimension. Temporary nurses did report performing OCBs, however, refuting arguments that temporary employees would not perform any OCBs. Temporary nurses also scored consistently on the transactional end of the transactional-relational contract continuum, suggesting that Contract theory accurately reflects the issues involved in temporary employment.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 57-06, Section: B, page: 4069.

Thesis (PH.D.)--UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA, 1996.

School code: 0130.