Purpose: The purpose of this study as a descriptive questionnaire study conducted in the nurses working at the university hospitals was to identify the respective levels of ethical climate, ethical leadership and job satisfaction, and to determine the...
Purpose: The purpose of this study as a descriptive questionnaire study conducted in the nurses working at the university hospitals was to identify the respective levels of ethical climate, ethical leadership and job satisfaction, and to determine the effects of ethical climate and ethical leadership on job satisfaction by analyzing relationships between each variable.
Methods: The number of subjects in this study were 292 nurses currently working at 4 different universities, and a self-report questionnaire survey was conducted in them with no limit to their careers. The data collection was carried out from September 10 2015 to November 1, 2015. For the ethical climates of the study subjects, the tools of the Hospital Ethical Climate Survey (HECS) originally developed in the hospital nurses by Olson (1988) but corrected or supplemented by Hwang & Park (2014) were used. Whereas for the ethical leadership, a Korean version of the Ethical Leadership at Work Questionnaire (ELW) of Kalshoven, Hartog & Hoogh (2011), so called ELW (Korean version of Ethical Leadership at Work Questionnaire; K-ELW) developed by Kim & Park (2015) targeting the nurse population was used. For job satisfaction, it was studied by using Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ) developed by Weiss et al., (1967), subsequently modified and supplemented by Jong-Suk Yun 윤종숙 (2004) were used as survey questionnaires. The survey was conducted among a total of 263 copies for the final analysis subjects. The data collected by the questionnaires were analyzed by using SPSS/WIN 21.0 program for the following parameters; frequency and percentage, the mean and the standard deviation, etc. The data was also analyzed by using t-test, one-way ANOVA, Pearson’s Correlation Coefficient, and Stepwise multiple regression.
Results: The mean value of ethical climates was 93.31 points (SD=10.58) and when converted to 100 points scale, the patient displayed the highest score among 5 sub-domains. The mean value of ethical leadership was 3.65 points (SD=0.43) and the relationship fairness displayed the highest score among 7 sub-domains, as the mean value of relationship fairness domain was 4.03 points (SD=0.76). Job satisfaction had shown a total of 3.08 points (SD= 0.45). When the subject perceived the ethical climates more positively and when the subject perceived ethical leadership more positively, the job satisfaction was respectively higher (r=0.669, p< .001) (r=0.528, p< .001). In addition, when the subject perceived ethical climates more positively, it was presented that the ethical leadership was also perceived more positively. (r=0.662, p< .001). When investigated, the impacts of ethical climates and ethical leadership of subjects on the job satisfaction, the hospital-oriented and the human-oriented explanatory power was 44.8%, as respective sub-domains of ethical climates and ethical leadership. And the human-oriented subdomain of ethical leadership was identified as having a larger impact on the job satisfaction than the hospital-oriented subdomain of ethical climates.
Conclusion: According to the results of this study, the nurses working in this university hospital was closely related in the association with not only to administrators, physicians, patients and colleagues among the sub-domains of ethical climates but also in the association with the hospital. To this end, the author recommends to conduct further studies about identification of the ethical climates that the hospital is seeking and its relationship between ethical leadership and job description. In addition, since it was identified that ethical climates and ethical leadership were closely related with job satisfaction, it would be necessary to develop promotion and education programs of ethical leadership and job satisfaction for the nursing administrator.