Chin Fei Goh
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Malaysia
Posters & Accepted Abstracts: Primary Health Care
Recent studies revealed that the turnover of nursing staff remains a main problem in emerging economies. The need for enhancing job satisfaction is a key ingredient in an organization to reduce turnover of nursing staff in emerging economies. Using a sample of 200 nursing staff employed by a large private and a public hospital in Malaysia, an investigation was performed on whether empowerment mediated the relationship between transformational leadership and job satisfaction. This analysis showed that empowerment mediated the effects of transformational leadership in nursing staff�s job satisfaction. The results of this research contribute to job satisfaction literature in the healthcare industries, by enhancing the understanding of the role of empowerment in the transformational leaders� influences on their followers� job satisfaction. Specifically, this study offers important insights to top managers who intend to increase job satisfaction among the nursing staff in the healthcare industry. First, from a nursing staff�s perspective, empowerment can be an indicator of organizational initiation in giving autonomy that removes the barriers of formalities in organizations. As such, nursing staff who can respond faster in decision-making will be able to alleviate work-related stress that causes job burnout and thus lead to higher job satisfaction. Second, from a managerial perspective, employee empowerment can be an effective mechanism to promote employee development that aligned with organization goals. Due to the turnover of nursing staff in emerging economies is relatively high employee empowerment strategy can be emphasized in mitigating the nursing staff turnover. Empowerment can complement transformational leadership practices to enhance the job satisfaction among nursing staff. Thus, hospital administrators need to strike a balance between leadership practices and empowerment strategy to enhance job satisfaction among nursing staff.
Email: gcfei@utm.my
