Effect of Supervisor-Subordinate Communication and Leadership Style on Organizational Commitment of Nurses in Health Care Setting

Abstract

This study focuses on the role of supervisor-subordinate communication and leadership style on organisationalcommitment of nursing staff in the selected hospital. Meyer and Allen’s instrument for multidimensionalorganizational commitment was utilized in this research. Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire wasadapted from Stogdill’s” (LBDQ-XII) form 12 and the items related to supervisor- subordinate communicationwere derived from two different researches by Heald, Girton and Kazanskya. The structured questionnaire wascompleted by 134 nursing staff of a major complex hospital in Tehran, Iran. In the demographic data, themajority of the respondent were 20 -30 years old female, had more than 10 years tenure and a Bachelor Degree.Overall, T-test analysis showed significant differences in type I and type II leader’s consideration regarding levelof affective and continuance commitment. Regression analysis indicated a significant contribution ofcommunication exchange in affective commitment through type I and type II leader’s consideration, whereasmutual communication showed a significant contribution in affective commitment only in type II consideration.There was no contribution of supervisor-subordinate communication in continuance commitment according tothe two types of leader’s consideration. In conclusion, the level of affective commitment is different amongnursing staff and depends on quality of the leader and member communication and leaders’ consideration.Especially in higher level of leader consideration and mutual communication, dependency of the nursing staffwill increase. However, the continuance commitment depends on other factors which were not considered incurrent study.