The impact of the leadership styles of Deans on the Faculty members’ level of job satisfaction in nursing education in Oman

Al-Maqbali, Fatema Hamood Ali (2017) The impact of the leadership styles of Deans on the Faculty members’ level of job satisfaction in nursing education in Oman. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

Aim and background: this study investigates faculty members’ perceptions of the impact of Impact of the leadership styles of nursing deans on the job satisfaction of faculty members working in nursing education in Oman. Nursing education in Oman currently is going through a major transformation, with the appointment of new deans, the introduction of an accreditation process, and the upgrading of the nursing diploma to a Bachelor’s degree program in all governmental nursing institutions. These reform require significant development work in a short period of time; various taskforces have been established with specific tasks such as curriculum restructure, improving the range and number of research activities, the merging of institutes, introducing new policies, and establishing a quality assurance approach. This reform programme demands effective leadership to lead faculty, build the vision and respond to a range of external demands.
In Oman, there is a lack of research on the role of leadership in higher education and its importance to staff professional development and job satisfaction, which in turn reflects on the level of organizational performance. The significance of this study is that it explores the perceptions of both teaching staff and their deans in a comparable set of organizations to determine which leadership styles have the greatest potential to improve their organizations. This was an insider research project with the researcher being a nursing dean; however certain measures were taken to ensure validity and reliability of the study.

Method and conclusion: The study involved 147 lecturers and 7 leaders from various nursing institutes in Oman. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and questionnaires: the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (Weiss 1967) and the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (Avolio & Bass 2004). Qualitative data were analysed for recurring themes and coded accordingly. Coding categories were constructed from the concepts and themes that emerged during the interview process and from the review of the literature. The overall findings indicate that most faculty members are satisfied with the leadership style of their deans. The transformational leadership style emerged as the preferred style to ensure faculty satisfaction and maintain productivity levels in demanding times; however, the deans also used a transactional leadership style for specific tasks.

Implications: Management roles in health care education are very demanding, thorough preparation is required for the dean’s role and its associated tasks in order to develop and sustain a transformational style. Work-related leadership training and skill-development workshops, mentoring, and survival skills workshops could provide new deans with much needed support. The research on transformational leadership provides a good starting point; however, we need to think of the next step. It is very clear that deans of nursing institutes need to adopt transformational-transactional leadership styles to overcome continuous challenges, satisfy the nursing faculty and boost organizational productivity. Hence, the role of the nursing dean in Oman has to be built on transformational leadership, with a focus on collaboration by adopting a distributive stance (distributed leadership) that focuses on learning.

• Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Keywords: Leadership, job satisfaction, nursing.
• Subjects: L Education > L Education (General); R Medicine > RT Nursing
• Colleges/Schools: College of Social Sciences > School of Education > Professional Learning and Leadership
• Supervisor's Name: McMahon, Dr. Margery
• Date of Award: 2017
• Depositing User: Mrs FATEMA AL-MAQBALI
• Unique ID: glathesis:2017-7935
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 23 Feb 2017 16:28
• Last Modified: 20 Mar 2017 08:44
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/7935