Job satisfaction in a sample of nurses: A multilevel focus on work team variability about the head nurse's transformational leadership

Using a multilevel approach with a sample of 560 nurses, this study investigates the relationship between job satisfaction and a number of variables, particularly transformational leadership, found in the nursing literature. Job satisfaction is one of the most widely investigated outcomes in the nursing literature, and is very important because of its relations with other well-being, quality of service and managerial outcomes. The individual level antecedents investigated in this study are: organizational tenure, positive affectivity, independence at work, and transformational leadership. A multi-level focus is used since, as a further predictor of job satisfaction, we consider the variability in the perceptions of work group members (i.e., the disagreement among team members) on the transformational leadership style of their head nurses. We hypothesize that followers’ inconsistent perceptions of their head nurse’s leadership have a negative relation with job satisfaction. Results show that at the individual level, positive affectivity, independence at work and transformational leadership are positively related to job satisfaction, and the hypothesis that the variability of perceptions within the work group of the head nurse’s transformational leadership has a negative relation with job satisfaction is confirmed. This study bears out the idea that the variability of leadership perceptions within work groups should be considered as an additional parameter, even more so when the team dimension is central for the profession in question.