Structural Relations of Leadership Type, Job Satisfaction, and Organizational Commitment in Healthcare Organizations

Healthcare organizations need mutual cooperation among various medical professionals in order to carry out the performance of their duties spite of having a strong job specialization and independence based on license. However, spite of the importance of leadership roles, there have not been enough researches dealt with leadership effect under the complex duties' relationship of a healthcare organization. This study suggested a new model by combining characteristics of leadership style, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment using Structural Equation Model.

The data were self-administered questionnaires collected in 2006 from 437 employees of 5 hospitals located in Seoul. The items of questionnaire were composed as a method of choosing new leadership style based on the Bass's standardized questionnaire on a transactional/transformational leadership combining the LBDQ-XII and Graen and Uhl-Bien's LMK scale through simulation techniques responding to organizational commitment.

As a result, two leadership style that affect on organizational commitment came out. Leadership style A had a positive correlation to job satisfaction of vision and autonomy. Leadership style B had a negative correlation to job satisfaction of vision but an insignificant correlation to job satisfaction of autonomy. However, on condition that job satisfaction had been achieved, organizational commitment was naturally accompanied. The former leadership style indicated vision of organization, and the latter focused on a task and its reward.

According to the result of this study, the leadership style increasing employees' self-confidence and having continuous response relationship between managers and employees improved their discretion and empowerment as well as worthwhileness and pride. However, the leadership style emphasizing reward and a sense of duty brought about a bad result. After all, the leadership style based on vision and change had an effect on organizational commitment but the other one based on reward and a sense of duty seemed to be unsuccessful in organizational commitment.