Leadership is the ability to influence and pursue the follower by guiding, motivating and directing to achieve organizational effectiveness (1). Many health management literatures emphasize that effective leadership is highly related to nurse staff work satisfaction(2) and that satisfied nurses are more likely to stay not only in the profession but also in the health care organization which they are satisfied with (3).
There are various styles of leadership that nurse managers have demonstrated to lead staff nurses in hospital (4), but before the introduction of transformational leadership style, the transactional leadership style was perceived by most nurses’ managers as the most effective style in health care organizationsSince the early 1990s, transformational leadership style has been preferred over transactional leadership style (5) because health care environment demands leaders who inspire others with the vision of what can be accomplished (6). There is a limited literature in areas related to Nurse managers’ leadership styles. The objective of this study was thus to investigate the relationship between leadership styles of nurse managers and nurses’ job satisfaction at Jimma University Specialized Hospital. The theoretical framework guiding this study was the Transformational Leadership Theory first developed by Burns in 1978(5) and later expanded by Bass (5) to provide a useful model for effective nursing leadership in modern health care settings (Figure 1).
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