IMPACT OF STAFF NURSE PARTICIPATION IN DECISION-MAKING ON JOB SATISFACTION AND ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT.

Description

This study focused on the impact of staff nurse participation in decision-making on job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Hospitals, the largest employer of nurses, have historically been relatively restrictive work environments for registered nurses. As employees of hierarchical, bureaucratic structures, nurses have enjoyed relatively little authority, autonomy or control over their practice. As nursing education has promoted an idealized professional role and as expectations of practicing nurses have changed, hospitals have experienced pressure to create meaningful opportunities for nurses to participate in decision-making at all levels of the organization. A strategy widely promoted to improve the work environment of nurses and therefore presumably nurses' job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and ultimate retention within the nursing organization and nursing profession, is to involve nurses more extensively in participation in decision-making. While there is popular support for the concept of decentralized decision-making or shared governance, there has been little empirical evidence to support the concept. This study was designed to examine the influence of participation in decision-making of staff nurses on two variables--job satisfaction and organizational commitment. A survey was used to collect data from 564 staff nurses at the University of Minnesota Hospital and Clinic. Data for the study were collected as part of a larger hospital-wide project funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The instrument used to collect data was compiled from several sources including the Organizational Assessment Index and the Organizational Commitment Questionnaire. The survey also contained questions that focused on present and preferred level of involvement in decision-making in seventeen different decisional areas. Some questions focused on clinical types of decisions while other decisional situations were non-direct patient care related. The study confirmed that nurses overwhelmingly prefer to be highly involved in decision-making in clinical and administrative areas. It was also determined that nurses overall actually participate in fewer decisions than they would prefer to. There was evidence that participation in decision-making and the congruence between preferred and actual level of involvement is related to job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Demographic variables including age, education, and experience were generally noncontributory in explaining variance in the dependent variables.

Subjects