Factors Affecting Quality of Leader-Follower Relationships in the Context of Nurses in Philippine/Metro Manila Hospitals

Factors Affecting Quality of Leader-Follower Relationships in the Context of Nurses in Philippine/Metro Manila Hospitals

by Janelle P. Castro, PhD in Leadership Studies major in Organizational Development Candidate

ABSTRACT

Issues in the health sector pose unique challenges to leaders of health organizations, especially to the nurses who make up the majority of the workforce in this sector. In nursing, studies on leadership have primarily focused on the leader rather than the follower. While these studies have yielded very important contributions, a coherent understanding of the phenomenon may not be achieved without looking at followers and their relationship with the leader as influenced by the context of where leadership is experienced. By employing a sequential exploratory mixed methods design, this study sought to understand the factors affecting the quality of leader-follower relationships in the context of nurses from the perspective of the staff nurses. Thematic analysis was done on interviews with 11 staff nurses working in tertiary hospitals. After this, data collected from an online survey of 317 staff nurses was analyzed using a structural equation modeling approach. The findings from the qualitative phase demonstrated that the main factors that affect the quality of the relationship were characteristics of both the leader and the follower. Quantitatively, the results affirmed that nurse leaders exhibiting authentic leadership behaviors predict high-quality LMX relationships between leaders and their staff nurses. The nurse practice environment was not found to have an effect on the quality of leader-follower relationships. This study proposed a model for development of high-quality leader-follower relationships among nurses in the clinical setting.

4pm, Monday, April 18, 2022 (Online)

Adviser:

Ma. Assunta C. Cuyegkeng, PhD

Panelists:

Teresita R. Irigo-Barcelo, PhD

Patrick Falguera, SJ, PhD

Edna P. Franco, PhD

Ma. Regina M. Hechanova, PhD

Keywords: Leader-follower relationships, nursing leadership