Nurse Managers’ Leadership Styles in Finland

Soili Vesterinen,Arja Isola,Marjo Suhonen,Leena Paasivaara

doi:10.1155/2012/605379

Abstract

Nurse managers who can observe their own behaviour and its effects on employees can adjust to a better leadership style. The intention of this study was to explore nurses' and supervisors' perceptions of nurse managers' leadership styles. Open-ended interviews were conducted with 11 nurses and 10 superiors. The data were analysed by content analysis. In the study, six leadership styles were identified: visionary, coaching, affiliate, democratic, commanding, and isolating. Job satisfaction and commitment as well as operation and development work, cooperation, and organizational climate in the work unit were the factors, affected by leadership styles. The nurse managers should consider their leadership style from the point of view of employees, situation factors, and goals of the organization. Leadership styles where employees are seen in a participatory role have become more common.

Highlights

Health care is changing dynamically in the 2010s
This paper focuses on Finnish nurse managers’ leadership styles
The data analysis of the factors affected by leadership styles was inductive

Summary

Introduction

The economic recession and problems with recruiting professionals [1, 2], staff retention [3], creating healthy work environments [4, 5], and a growing demand for customer orientation [6] pose challenges for nurse managers’ work. More expertise in management is needed to respond to these issues. One essential area of nurse manager’s management skills is the use of different leadership styles [7]. Earlier studies indicate that nurse manager’s effective leadership style is affiliated to staff retention [5], work unit climate [4], nurses’ job satisfaction [9, 10], nurses’ commitment [11], and patient satisfaction [12]

Results

Discussion

Conclusion