Description
Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore the relationships among leadership style of the manager, the level of collaborative behavior between the clinical nurses and the manager as perceived by the clinical nurse, and their relationships to job satisfaction. Secondly, the study will compare nurses' perceptions of transformational leadership, nurse-manager collaborative relationship and job satisfaction between hospitals in Saudi Arabia (SA) as compared to hospitals in the southwestern of the United States (US) to determine the cultural influence on these variables. Significance: Understanding the impact of leadership styles and collaborative behavior between managers and nurses will lead to improvements in leader-employee relations, and ultimately, positively influence employee job satisfaction. Hypotheses: 1. Transformational leadership will be positively correlated with job satisfaction. 2. Higher levels of nurse-manager collaboration will be positively related to job satisfaction. 3. There will be a positive relationship between transformational leadership and nursemanager collaboration. 4. There will be significant differences in the nurses' perceptions of transformational leadership, nurse-manager collaboration, and job satisfaction between hospitals in SA and the US. Methodology: This study uses a mixed methodology with a descriptive correlational and comparative design to determine relationships among the study variables and differences between nurses working in 2 hospitals in SA with 3 hospitals in the same healthcare system in the US (San Diego) A randomized sample of 90 staff nurses was drawn from the population of nurses working in the study hospitals. Only Registered Nurses were included in the study. Instruments: Four instruments were used in the study: 1) a demographic survey used to describe the sample and control for confounding variables, 2) the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ), 3) the Collaborative Behavior Scale (CBS), and the 4) Index of Work Satisfaction (IWS). v Results Transformation leadership (r = -.493**) and nurse manager collaboration (r = -.602**) were negatively correlated with job satisfaction as measured by the total IWS scale which did not support Hypotheses 1 & 2. Transformation leadership was significantly and positively correlated with nurse manager collaboration (r = .643**) which supported Hypothesis 3. There were significant differences between the SA nurses perceptions and the US nurses perceptions on all three instruments which supported Hypothesis 4. This is the first study demonstrating significant correlations between transformational leadership and nurse manager collaboration.
