The influence of authentic leadership and areas of worklife on work engagement of registered nurses

Findings suggest that nurses who work for managers demonstrating higher levels of authentic leadership report a greater overall person-job match in the six areas of worklife and greater work engagement.

Abstract

AIM: To examine the relationships among nurses' perceptions of nurse managers' authentic leadership, nurses' overall person-job match in the six areas of worklife and their work engagement. BACKGROUND: Reports have highlighted the impact of demanding and unsupportive work environments on nurses' wellbeing, resulting in a need for strong nursing leadership to build sustainable and healthier work environments. METHODS: A secondary analysis of data collected from a non-experimental, predictive design survey of a random sample of 280 registered nurses working in acute care hospitals was conducted. RESULTS: An overall person-job match in the six areas of worklife fully mediated the relationship between authentic leadership and work engagement. Further, authentic leadership, overall person-job match in the six areas of worklife and years of nursing experience explained 33.1% of the variance in work engagement. CONCLUSIONS: Findings suggest that nurses who work for managers demonstrating higher levels of authentic leadership report a greater overall person-job match in the six areas of worklife and greater work engagement. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT: As nurse managers' play a key role in promoting work engagement among nurses, authentic leadership development for nurse managers focusing on self-awareness, relational transparency, ethics and balanced processing would be beneficial.