THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LEADERSHIP STYLES AND WORK COMMITMENT AMONG NURSE EDUCATORS

Abstract

Leadership is the ability to influence a group toward the achievement of its goals. It is a dynamic and interactive process that involves three dimensions: the leader, the follower and the situation. Nurse educator employs specific leadership style to influence nurse students to achieve goals. She/he needs to be aware of individual differences of nurse students, task structure, situational variables and adjust her/his leadership style accordingly to attain goals. The style she/he provides influences her/his work commitment.

Low level of nurse educators' work commitment is a serious problem at all categories of nursing faculty. Nurse educators' work commitment is currently facing a great challenge at the nursing faculty. Lack of work commitment is an antecedent of intention to turnover and to leave the work which is costly to any organization in terrns of money, expertise and to hire and train other new nurse educators.

Therefore, the present study aims to investigate the relationship between leadership styles of nurse educators and their work commitment to deterrnine whether the use of a certain leadership style by nurse educators in various scientific nursing departments at the Faculty of Nursing, Alexandria University makes difference in nurse educators work commitment.

Setting and Subjects: The present study was conducted in all scientific departments of the Faculty of Nursing, Alexandria University. The study subjects comprised all nurse educators who were available at the time of data collections (n= I 48) in the mentioned settings and willing to participate in the study.

Tools: Two tools were used in the present study to identify the relationship between leadership styles and work commitment among nurse educators at the identified settings:

• Tool 1: Teacher leadership style questionnaire The nurse educator leadership style questionnaire was used to identifY the nurse educators leadership styles: autocratic, democratic, laissez-faire, transformational and transactional leadership among nurse educators. It comprised of 68-items with a 5-point Like1i scale ranged from I (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).

Furthermore, two open ended questions were added to elicit nurse educators' opinions about their preferences of leadership style.

• Tool II: Three-Components Organi7.1tional Commitment Instrument Nurse educator commitment questionnaire was adapted based on Meyer and Allen 1990) to identifY affective, continuance and normative commitment to the Faculty of Nursing<' ) The questionnaire comprises 45-items with 5-point Likert scale ranged from I (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).