Paper
Thursday, July 22, 2004
Empowerment, Power, and Organizational Commitment: Identifying Nurses Planning to Quit Within Two Years
Margaret J. Dick, RN, PhD, School of Nursing, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC, USA and Aimee T. McPeak, RNC, MSN, NNP, Neonatology, Baylor University Medical Center, Dallas, TX, USA.
| Learning Objective #1: Identify the relationships between nurses' empowerment, and their perceptions of managers' power within the organization, and how these relate to organizational commitment |
| Learning Objective #2: Identify how organizational structure and organizational commitment are related to plans to remain with one's current employer |
Objective: Determine relationships between empowerment, perceptions of managers’ power, and organizational commitment, and plans to remain with current employer. Design: Correlational study to test components of Laschinger’s modification of Kanter’s Structural Theory of Power in Organizations. Population, Sample, Setting, Years: Non-management level nurses employed full-time on traditional 24/7 units at a large multi-campus community hospital in the southeastern United States. Stratified random cluster sampling was used to ensure adequate numbers of nurses from all campuses. Data were collected in the spring of 2002. Variables: Work-related empowerment measured by CWEQ-II; formal and informal power measured by the JAS-II and the ORS-II; staff nurses perceptions of the power of their immediate managers within the organization measured with the ODO-Part B; organizational commitment measured with the OCQ. Subjects categorized their plans to remain with organization in two years. Method: Surveys mailed to home addresses of the nurses (502 mailed, 171 were returned (34%) from all campuses and all types of units. Findings: Results were consistent with Laschinger’s work. There were positive correlations between nurses’ empowerment and their managers’ power within the organization (.58, p<.05), between nurses’ empowerment and organizational commitment (.42, p<.05), and between manager’s power and organizational commitment (.38, p<.05). Those who planned to leave within two years had significantly lower scores on empowerment, manager’s power, and organizational commitment. Conclusions: Results support earlier work by Laschinger, that greater access to information, support, and resources, as well as the perception that one’s manager has power to get things accomplished are related to greater organizational commitment. A sense of low power leads to low organizational commitment and an increased likelihood of leaving the organization. Implications: Work redesign that increases access to information, resources, and a sense of power in decision-making may lead to greater organizational commitment and encourage nurses to stay in the organization.
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Sigma Theta Tau International
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