تأثیر رهبری مبتی بر تغییر بر عملکرد کار و رضایت شغلی در بیمارستان ها – نقش تقاضای یادگیری و مشارکت شغلی The influence of change-oriented leadership on work performance and job satisfaction in hospitals – the mediating roles of learning demands and job involvement

Introduction New technology and advancements in treatment continuously transform hospital clinical work and administrative processes. These transformations also create high learning demands on all employees. Major advances have been made in fields such as information management, automated lab-tests, telemedicine, radiology and biotechnology. There is, however in the health sector, a gap between what is technologically possible and the resources available. The contextual dynamics of leadership in the health sector is possibly the most complex and challenging of all contexts (Denis et al., 2010). Introducing change in the health sector can create heavy learning demands. It can also lead to conflicts of interest where professional groups want to be involved and have a say in solving challenges. Change-oriented leadership behaviour theory emphasises that a leader is responsible for monitoring the environment, identifying necessary changes and acquiring the follower commitment and involvement that is required to implement change (Gill, 2002; Hayes, 2014; Yukl, 2013). Successful implementation of organizational change is dependent on follower commitment. Follower commitment to a change appears to develop over time and through the change itself (Tafvelin et al., 2014). In health services, there is a great need to implement change without reducing job performance and job satisfaction of hospital workers. Mechanisms that can mediate the influence of change-oriented leaders therefore need to be explored, to find ways of achieving this. Job involvement is an important work characteristic in many work design theories (Bakker and Demerouti, 2007; Hackman and Oldham, 1980; Oldham and Hackman, 2010). Learning demands however become an everyday experience where rates of organizational change are high. Learning demands can, due to higher levels of strain, have a negative influence on employee satisfaction and performance. In this paper, we examine the mechanisms through which change-oriented leadership directly and indirectly can influence job performance and employee satisfaction. We examine whether change-oriented leadership can have a direct positive effect on job performance and job satisfaction. Additionally, we examine whether learning demands and job involvement play mediating roles in change leadership’s influence on job performance and job satisfaction. Different professional groups in hospitals are embedded within different contexts. They may therefore perceive change processes and job characteristics in different ways. To increase the validity of findings, as well as to take the different professional groups into consideration, the theoretical and conceptual model will be assessed among different hospital groups (doctors, nurses and administrative staff) as well as at total survey sample consisting of data collected from four Norwegian hospitals. Structural equation modelling (SEM) is used to analyse data and explore the appropriateness of hypotheses and the theoretical model.