Paper: Acculturation, Collectivist Orientation, and Organizational Commitment of Asian Nurses Working in the United States (40th Biennial Convention (October 31st- November 4th, 2009))

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Shwu-Ru Liou, PhD, RN
Department of Nursing, Chang Gung Institute of Technology at Chiayi Campus, Chiayi, Taiwan
Ching-Yu Cheng, PhD, RN
Family and Community Health Nursing, Virginia Commonwealth University, School of Nursing, Richmond, VA

Learning Objective 1: 1. The learner will be able to understand relationship between acculturation, collectivist orientation, and organizational commitment of first-generation Asian nurses.

Learning Objective 2: 2. The learner will be able to understand the influence of collectivist orientation on organizational commitment.

Numbers of Asian nurses increase steadily in the U.S. These nurses, who are collectivist oriented, may commit to their organization and therefore have higher intention to stay. However, how their degree of acculturation and collectivist orientation influence organizational commitment was not studied. Research questions were (a) what is the relationship between acculturation, collectivist orientation, and organizational commitment? (b) is collectivist orientation a mediator of acculturation and organizational commitment? Data from 193 Asian nurses, who were born outside the U.S. and worked more than 6 months in their current job, were analyzed. Participants' mean age was 39.67, lived 13.29 years in the U.S., and practiced 7.06 years at current position. Most of them were Filipino or Chinese, had a bachelor degree or higher, and work full-time. Acculturation, collectivist orientation, and organizational commitment were measured with five items from the Suinn-Lew Asian Self-Identity Acculturation Scale, Collectivist Orientation Scale, and Organizational Commitment Questionnaire. Descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation, and regression were used to analyze the data. Results showed that participants were not acculturated, were collectivist oriented, and highly committed to their organization. Acculturation was not related to collectivist orientation or organizational commitment while collectivist orientation and organizational commitment were related. Acculturation explained 1.6% of the variance of organizational commitment and was not included in the regression model. Collectivist orientation was included in the regression model and could explain 8.1% of the variance of organizational commitment. Similar to other studies, Asian nurses were more likely to accept and commit to their organizations. Because the participants' were first generation, they were not acculturated and therefore, might not present influences on organizational commitment in this study. Nurse administrators may provide cultural competent environment to facilitate international nurses to adapt to the new environment and willing to stay at current job.

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