Discussion
Our SPO framework served as an excellent guide for forging effective SP linkages among team members and between teams and their leaders that resulted in successful outcomes. There were, however, some important lessons learned from this study. In the magnet/healthy work environment and empowerment literature, leadership support at all organizational levels indicates that the organization is committed to nurses’ involvement in CNP, and leaders provide access to empowerment structures such as information, resources and opportunities (Laschinger et al. 2003). We received Expression of Interest letters from each project site, pledging support for project work from front-line to executive levels of leadership. We found, however, that ongoing organizational restructuring often took precedence over project work, and in some instances, other initiatives threatened operational leaders’ support for project team work.
Although positive work relationships between team members and their front line leaders enhanced team work and helped create links to operations leaders, the operations leaders were the most important structural support for teams. There were independent functioning teams that required little external facilitation, but their ultimate success was determined by operations leaders who endorsed their project work and ensured ready access to empowerment structures. Operations leaders directly influenced team autonomy by providing teams with an equal voice in workload decision making.
Statements from project team members and staff indicated that operational leaders’ styles made a difference to outcomes. Although leadership styles were not formally assessed with a standardized survey tool, the successful project sites were associated with operational leaders who were described in terms similar to Conger and Kanungo’s (1988) five types of empowering behaviours: enhancing meaningfulness of work, fostering participation in decision making, facilitating goal accomplishment, expressing confidence in high performance and providing freedom and autonomy from bureaucratic constraints. Laschinger et al. (1999) found associations between leader empowering behaviours and nurse work effectiveness. Greco et al. (2006) showed via path analysis that leader empowering behaviours had a significant effect on structural empowerment (β = 0.71) which in turn had a strong effect on nurses’ fit with their work life/work environment (β = 0.67). Nurses’ areas of work life, in turn, were inversely related to nurse burnout (β = −0.54). Leaders are the gatekeepers to empowerment structures.
Our study showed that effective team and team-operations leader relationships were based on respect and trust, often stemming from historical associations. Trust and respect are closely connected (Mishra & Spreitzer 1998), although there is more empirical evidence linking trust to leadership. The Institute of Medicine (2004) reported that quality, safe work environments resulted from leaders’ ability to promote trust among employees throughout the organization. In one study that examined relationships between leader qualities and trust in the leader, three variables predicted 67% of team members’ trust in their leader: common values, sharing a vision and consulting with team members when making decisions (Gillespie & Mann 2004). We found that common team identity and goals resulted from teams and teams-operations leaders working through conflict issues and building strong relationships with one another.
Using path analysis techniques, Laschinger and Finegan (2005) demonstrated that structural empowerment had a direct effect on nurses’ sense of interactional justice (β = 0.49) which had a direct effect on respect (β = 0.49) and organizational trust (β = 0.27). Structural empowerment also had significant direct effects on respect (β = 0.24) and trust (β = 0.25). In the tested model, structural empowerment either directly or indirectly resulted in increased nurse job satisfaction and organizational commitment. By employing structural empowerment strategies, leaders can develop trusting, respectful relationships with staff that lead to positive nurse outcomes. We found that teams’ mistrust was often associated with operation leaders’ unwillingness to provide access to empowerment structures.