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An Ethical Leadership Program for Nursing Unit Managers

Monday, 19 September 2016: 3:45 PM

Mihyun Park, PhD, RN
College of Nursing, The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul, Korea, The Republic of
Sang-Hee Jeon, PhD, RN
Department of Nursing, Hanseo University, Seoul, Korea, The Republic of
Kyungok Choi, PhD, RN
Department of Nrusing, The Catholic University of Korea Seoul St.Mary’s Hospital, Seoul, Korea, The Republic of
Mi Kyoung Kim, PhD, RN
Department of Nursing, The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital, Seoul, Korea, The Republic of

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to develop an educational program for nursing unit managers to facilitate ethical leadership, to exam the effects of the program on their ethical leadership skills and organizational citizenship behaviors, and to make recommendations about an ethical leadership program.

Study design: We conducted a longitudinal study to test the effect of an ethical leadership program for 48 nursing unit managers (UMs) in a teaching hospital in South Korea. Of 48 UMs, forty four UMs attended more than 80 percent of the classes and completed pretest and posttest self-reported measures assessing ethical leadership using the Korean-version of Ethical Leadership at Work Questionnaire (K-ELW) (Kim & Park, 2015) and organizational citizenship behaviors (Podsakoff, Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Maynes, & Spoelma, 2014). The effect of the ethical leadership program was examined via Generalized Estimating Equations for models for matched pairs.

Program: The ethical leadership program was based on ‘the principles and practice of ethical leadership’ developed by Thornton (2013) and carried out using cooperative learning groups as well as lecturing. The program consisted of total seven classes during six months. Each class was operated for two hours once a month. The content of the program included the following topics; 1) Introduction to ethical leadership (7 lenses of ethical responsibility), 2) lead with a moral compass, 3) lead in ways that bring out the best in others,4)lead with positive intent and impact, 5) lead for the greater good, and 6) the future of ethical leadership.

Results: The total mean score of ethical leadership and organizational citizenship behaviors showed increasing trends in post-test compared with pre-test (z=-1.84, p=.065; z=-0.54, p=.585, respectively), although there were statistically no significant differences. Furthermore, there were statistically significant differences in ‘people orientation’ and ‘concern for sustainability’ of domains in ethical leadership between pre-test and post-test (z=-2.05, p=.040; z=-3.08, p=.002, respectively). After the program, UMs who were less than 40 years old tended to report greater changes in the total score of ethical leadership than UMs who were more than 41years old (z=-2.72, p=.006); UMs who had less than 4 years’ experience as a UM tended to report greater changes in the total score of ethical leadership than UMs who had more than 5 years’ experience as a UM (z=-2.76, p=.005).

Conclusion: An ethical leadership program may have an impact on ethical leadership competencies of UMs. In particular, using the practical program contents easily adapted to UMs’ daily work can be more effective to make an impact on their ethical leadership competencies. Furthermore, the implementation of an ethical leadership program to UM groups that are younger and less than 4 years’ experience as a UM can be more effective. Our experience about an ethical leadership program will be useful information for nursing administers and educators with concern about fostering ethical leadership competencies among nursing leaders.

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