Nurse Managers Leadership Styles: A Study from a Czech Profit-Oriented Hospital

Leadership can be described as a phenomenon that researchers deal with across social sciences. It is important in influencing the behaviour of individual employees and therefore the effectiveness of whole organizations. Human resources including leadership represent an irreplaceable component in the organization and are one of the most valuable assets of an organization. In recent years, more attention has been devoted to this phenomenon also in the area of healthcare management. Healthcare organizations are a very complex and dynamic organism. The difficulty of performing a leader's role in healthcare is that many of their decisions are reflected in the quality of individuals' lives and society as a whole. By their capabilities and decisions, the leader should direct the organization to meet the stated goals and achieve quality service delivery. In particular, nurses represent crucial and equally the most extensive area of healthcare. Lead nurses abilities are an important factor in the quality of healthcare. The study sums up the contemporary knowledge concerning the transformational leadership theory, which incorporates transformational, transactional and laissez-faire leadership style. It focuses on this topic in the healthcare management setting. The purpose of this study is to assess and explore the leadership style displayed by lead nurses working at one of the profit-oriented hospitals in the Czech Republic. The aim of our study is to find out which leadership style is predominant by lead nurses in a selected Czech hospital and to determine which leadership style is connected with higher staff nurses' job satisfaction. Data was collected through the Bass Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) and HealthCare Institute (HCI) staff satisfaction questionnaire and analysed by standard statistical methods. The obtained results are discussed with studies from other countries.