Investigating the relationship between leadership style of nursing department managers and work engagement in faculty members of Iranian universities of medical sciences

The success of an organization is determined by its human ‎resources. Work engagement leads to higher productivity and performance of the organization. Leaders seek to understand the impact of ‎their leadership style on work engagement. This is even more important in educational organizations but research in this area is insufficient. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between department ‎manager’s leadership styles and faculty member’s work engagement in some Iranian universities of medical ‎sciences‎.

This was a descriptive-analytical correlational study. 149 people including faculty members and department managers with at least 6 months of work experience were selected through the convenience sampling method. Data collection tools included ‎a demographic questionnaire, a multi-factor leadership questionnaire, and a Schaufeli & Bakker work engagement questionnaire whose validity and reliability were examined. ‎Data were analyzed using SPSS software version 16.

A total of 114 faculty members with 13.42 ± 9.75 and 35 department managers with 19.91 ± 8.67 work experience participated in this study. Faculty members reported high work engagement. There was a positive and significant relationship between work engagement and interactional (P = 0.010) and transformational leadership (P = 0.001). ‎There was a significant difference between manager’s and employee’s views on the interactional ‎and transformational leadership (P < 0.001).

Managers can promote job engagement by selecting the proper leadership style, and the advantages can be leveraged to boost organizational productivity.