FACTORS INFLUENCING THE LEADERSHIP BEHAVIORS OF STAFF NURSES.
Contributors: Arizona State University.
Published: 1989
Number of pages: 220
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.
Description: A crisis in nursing is emerging as the largest cohort of nurses--staff nurses--demonstrate a lack of leadership behaviors needed to advance the field of nursing and to ensure delivery of quality health care. The purpose of this study was to provide information about staff nurse leadership behaviors based on empirical data rather than available prescriptive literature.

A Staff Nurse Leadership Behaviors (SNLB) Model was developed and used as a descriptive framework to analyze the relationship between organization and individual factor variables, organizational climate and work-life involvement variables, and the dependent variable, leadership behaviors. Policy environment factor variables were used to categorize states into a continuum of ultra-conservative, conservative, and moderate policy environments.

A survey of 2,324 licensed, registered full time hospital staff nurses in the three policy environments yielded 287 usable surveys. The staff nurses responded to standardized indexes which assessed their perception of leadership behaviors, professional attitudes, their organization's climate, locus of control, powerlessness, their work motives, and descriptive questions on individual, organizational/work-life, and professional/occupational issues.

Staff nurses perceived that they were professional, felt in control of their environment, and possessed internal work motives, but on the average, staff nurses in the three policy environments did not demonstrate leadership behaviors. The progressiveness of policy environments had no influence on leadership behaviors. The ultra-conservative policy environment had the greatest number of variables having significant positive relationships with leadership behaviors. These included professional attitudes and locus of control. In contrast, internal motivation influenced leadership behaviors in the conservative and moderate policy environments which had the highest percentage of staff nurses in collective bargaining units. A modified SNLB Model was developed as a result of this study to reflect variables that significantly influenced the demonstration of staff nurse leadership behaviors.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 50-06, Section: B, page: 2342.

Thesis (D.P.A.)--ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY, 1989.

School code: 0010.