The Influences of Authentic Leadership in Nursing: A Systematic Reviews

Purpose: Authentic leadership originated in positive psychology. At first, it was used in business and industry. The American Association of Critical Care Nurses(AACN) point out that authentic leadership was one of six criteria to create healthy environment. In recent years, there were many correlation research in authentic leadership in all walks of life, but in the part of nursing need to investigate. The study conducted a systematic review to explore the influences of authentic leadership in nursing.

Methods: Researchers search database including Academic Search Complete, Pub Med/Medline, Social science Citation Index, CINAHL, Psychology and Behavioral Science Collection, and ProQues for relevant articles published between 1993 and 2013. Use the keyword "authentic leadership", "research", "nursing". An initial 2402 original articles were identified. Applying inclusion and exclusion criteria left 8 articles that used Quality Assessment and Validity tool for correlational studies to evaluate the quality of the identified articles.

Results: The quality of eight articles were between medium quality (scores = 5-9) and high quality (scores = 10-14). The results of systematic review found total have 57 variables. Researchers used content analysis for 57 variables categorized into five themes: areas of work life and work engagement, structural empowerment and interprofessional collaboration, performance and job satisfaction, voice behavioral, identification, trust in management and care quality, and workplace bullying, burnout and turnover. Authentic leadership with areas of worklife(r= .43; p< .01), work engagemen(r= .28; p< .01), structural empowerment(r= .40~ .46; p< .01- .05), interprofessional collaboration (r= .42; p< .05), performance and job satisfaction (r= .17~ .40; p< .01), voice behavioral (r= .10~ .45; p< .01), personal identificatio (r= .72; p< .01), social identification (r= .20; p< .01), trust in management (r= .31~ .69; p< .01) and care quality (r= .19; p< .01) were postive correlation. Authentic leadership with workplace bullying (r= -.31~ -.69), burnout (r=-.13~ -.28) and turnover (r= -.24~ -.30) were negtive correlation.

Conclusion: This study support that authentic leadership is an effective leadership for nursing. The authors hopes that findings are helpful reference for nursing leaders to create a healthy environment.