Supervisor Support and Affective Organizational Commitment: The Mediator Role of Work Engagement

Nurses' work engagement: The influences of ambidextrous leadership, clinical nurse leadership and workload

AIM

To test the relationships among staff nurses' work engagement, nurse managers' ambidextrous leadership and staff nurses' clinical leadership and workload.

DESIGN

A multicentre cross-sectional survey design was used.

METHODS

The study was conducted in eight medical centres from six representative provinces of China in October 2019. The participants completed electronic questionnaires that measured ambidextrous leadership, clinical nurse leadership, workload and work engagement. We used structural equation modelling to test a hypothetical model.

RESULTS

The hypothetical model had a good fit to the actual data. Ambidextrous leadership was positively associated with clinical nurse leadership and work engagement, and clinical nurse leadership had a significant positive relationship with work engagement, which partially mediated the path from ambidextrous leadership to work engagement. In addition, workload moderated the relationship between ambidextrous leadership and clinical nurse leadership.

CONCLUSION

This study makes a timely contribution to the nursing literature by demonstrating that nurse managers' ambidextrous leadership and clinical nurse leadership are important determinants of work engagement. Improving the level of ambidextrous leadership and clinical nurse leadership helps to enhance work engagement.

IMPACT

This study provides a new strategy to increase nurses' work engagement from a new perspective of nursing leadership. Enhancing nurse managers' ambidextrous leadership and clinical nurse leadership can increase work engagement. Nurse managers should value the role of ambidextrous leadership and clinical nurse leadership in promoting work engagement, especially when nurses perceive they have a low workload.

The relationships between organizational culture and thriving at work among nurses: The mediating role of affective commitment and work engagement

AIM

Guided by the social embeddedness model of thriving at work, this paper explores how nursing organizational culture, work engagement and affective commitment affect nurses' thriving at work.

BACKGROUND

Thriving at work has implications for better employee and organization outcomes. The antecedents of thriving at work among the nursing population needs to be expanded by analysing the cross-level impact of organizational and individual characteristics.

METHODS

A cross-sectional design was used to collect data from 1437 frontline nurses in a tertiary teaching hospital in China between April and May 2020 through an online survey about perceived nursing culture, work engagement, affective commitment and thriving at work. Data were analysed using SPSS, and a structural equation model was established using the PROCESS macro.

RESULTS

Our results showed that work engagement and affective commitment mediated the relationship between nurses' perceived nursing culture and their thriving at work. Among nurses, work engagement was positively correlated to affective commitment.

CONCLUSION

Our study confirmed the social embeddedness model of thriving at work by showing that both contextual and dispositional factors can influence nurses' thriving at work. Nurse leaders can foster nursing staff's thriving at work by building an inclusive work environment and by providing adequate resources to staff. Future research is needed to elaborate on employee and organizational outcomes associated with thriving at work.

IMPACT

Nurse leaders should be the advocate for nurses to improve their organizational identification, fostering their thriving at work. Individual nurses can also take an active role in developing work-related resources to sustain their thriving through self-adaption processes. Collective thriving in the nursing workforce is needed to overcome adversity and hardship in the ever-changing and increasingly demanding health care industry and to further contribute to the vitality of the broader social and public environments.

PATIENT OR PUBLIC CONTRIBUTION

No patient or public contribution. This study did not involve patients, service users, caregivers or members of the public.

Importance of work engagement in primary healthcare

Background

Work engagement is crucial for quality care at the primary healthcare level. This is especially true during the Covid-19 pandemic, as it has effects on the community from both a health and economic point of view. For example, inadequate work engagement can lead to fewer referrals to the secondary healthcare level. This study aims to examine the work engagement level in a public healthcare organisation at the primary healthcare level to further explore the role of work environment characteristics. The study addresses a research gap in the field of primary healthcare and emphasises the importance of managing the factors promoting work engagement. The future of healthcare will be strongly shaped by population ageing and Covid-19 disruption, which have created unpredictable and unfavourable working situations.

Method

A descriptive, cross-sectional, correlational design was used including the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale with a non-probabilistic availability sample of 630 employees of the Community Health Centre Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 2018. The role of the work environment was observed by applying the job resources concept adapted to the context of the observed organisation.

Results

Work engagement in the observed organisation is higher compared to previous research. The research confirmed that job resources play an important role in employees’ work engagement. The high level of work engagement of the home care nursing employees coupled with the significant proportions of unengaged in the management of the organization also caught our attention. This difference highlights the importance of the leadership style, career choices and employment process that exist in an institution.

Conclusion

The study has important implications for healthcare management at the primary level for unlocking the work engagement by ‘managing’ the factors stimulating work engagement. The hidden potential is especially large in so called ‘soft areas’, such as leadership style, communication and organisational climate, which are also less expensive to manage than other aspects of the work environment.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12913-022-08402-7.

Co-worker support, voluntary turnover intention and knowledge withholding among IT specialists: the mediating role of affective organizational commitment

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to assess the effect of co-worker support on horizontal knowledge withholding and voluntary turnover intention among IT specialists. The study also explores the mediating role of affective organizational commitment.

Design/methodology/approach

The data are drawn from 118 IT specialists from a Polish software company. The model is tested through partial least squares path modeling.

Findings

The results revealed that the negative effect of co-worker support on voluntary turnover intention is fully mediated by organizational affective commitment. Contrary to expectations, co-worker support is not significantly negatively related to horizontal knowledge withholding.

Research limitations/implications

The cross-sectional data, self-reports and small sample size are limitations of this study. The respondents were a relatively homogenous group of employees, so the generalizability of results to other employees and industries is limited.

Practical implications

To increase affective organizational commitment and reduce voluntary turnover intention among IT specialists, managers should create the conditions to enhance co-worker support.

Originality/value

This research clarifies the role of affective organizational commitment, which has proven to be a bridge linking co-worker support and voluntary turnover intention. Moreover, this research investigates the previously unexplored effect of co-worker support on horizontal knowledge withholding.

Exploring a Common Data Element for International Research in Long-Term Care Homes: A Measure for Evaluating Nursing Supervisor Effectiveness

The aim of this study is to recommend a common data element (CDE) to measure supervisory effectiveness of staff working in LTC homes that can be used in international research. Supervisory effectiveness can serve as a CDE in an effort to establish an international, person-centered LTC research infrastructure in accordance with the aims of the WE-THRIVE group (Worldwide Elements to Harmonize Research in Long Term Care Living Environments). A literature review was completed and then a panel of experts independently reviewed and prioritized appropriateness of the measures with mindfulness of their potential applications to international LTC settings. The selection of a recommended CDE measure was guided by the WE-THRIVE group's focus on capacity rather than deficits, the expected availability of internationally comparable data and the goal to provide a short, ecologically viable measurement, specifically for low- and middle-income countries. Two measures were considered as the CDE for supervisory effectiveness, Benjamin Rose Relationship Scale and the Supervisory Support Scale; however, given that the latter measure has been translated in Spanish and Chinese and has been tested with nursing assistants in both of these countries with good psychometric properties, our group recommends it as the CDE going forward.