Abstract:
Leadership style of nurse managers plays a significant role in nurses’ job satisfaction.
However, there is limited literature in areas related to nurses’ manager leadership style. The objective of
this research was thus to investigate the relationship between leadership style of nurse managers and
nurses’ job satisfaction in Jimma University Specialized Hospital.
METHODS: The study was conducted at Jimma University Specialized Hospital from January to June
2012 and used a non-experimental correlation design. All full time, non-supervisory nurses with an
experience of more than one year in nursing profession were participated in the study. The Multifactor
Leadership Questionnaire and Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire were used to collect data. Data
were entered and analyzed using SPSS version16.0 statistical software. The results were analyzed
through descriptive statistics followed by the application of inferential statistics on the variables.
Significance level was considered when p<0.05.
RESULTS: A total of 175 copies of the questionnaires were returned out of 186 copies distributed to
respondents. The result indicated that nurses can prefer transformational leadership style over
transactional leadership style and had moderate-level intrinsic (M=2.72, SD=0.71) but low level of
extrinsic job satisfaction (M=1.83, SD=0.68). Furthermore, from transactional leadership, only
contingent reward was found to be statically significant and correlated with extrinsic (B=0.45, p<0.01)
and intrinsic job satisfaction (B=0.32, p<0.05) while all five dimension of transformational leadership
style were statistically significant and correlated with both intrinsic and extrinsic job satisfaction.
CONCLUSION: Nurses tended to be more satisfied with the transformational leadership than
transactional leadership style. Therefore, nurses’ managers should use transformational leadership style
in order to increase nurses’ job satisfaction.
