title: Effects of unit empowerment and perceived support for professional nursing practice on unit effectiveness and individual nurse well-being: a time-lagged study.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Recruitment and retention strategies have emphasized the importance of positive work environments that support professional nursing practice for sustaining the nursing workforce. Unit leadership that creates empowering workplace conditions plays a key role in establishing supportive practice environments that increase work effectiveness, and, ultimately, improves job satisfaction.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To test a multi-level model examining the effect of both contextual and individual factors on individual nurse job satisfaction. At the unit level, structural empowerment and support for professional nursing practice (organizational resources) were hypothesized to be predictors of unit level effectiveness. At the individual level, core self-evaluation, and psychological empowerment (intrapersonal resources) were modeled as predictors of nurse job satisfaction one year later. Cross-level unit effects on individual nurses' job satisfaction were also examined.
  
  
  METHODS
  This study employed a longitudinal survey design with 545 staff nurses from 49 hospital units in Ontario, Canada. Participants completed a survey at two points in time (response rate of 40%) with standardized measures of the major study variables in the hypothesized model. Multilevel structural equation modeling was used to test the model.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Nurses shared perceptions of structural empowerment on their units indirectly influenced their shared perceptions of unit effectiveness (Level 2) through perceived unit support for professional nursing practice, which in turn, had a significant positive direct effect on unit effectiveness (Level 2). Unit effectiveness was also strongly related to individual nurse job satisfaction one year later. At Level 1, higher core self-evaluation had a direct and indirect effect on job satisfaction through increased psychological empowerment.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The results suggest that nurses' job satisfaction is influenced by a combination of individual and contextual factors demonstrating utility in considering both sources of nurses' satisfaction with their work in creating effective nursing work environments.
authors.affiliation: Distinguished University Professor and Nursing Research Chair in Health Human Resources Optimization, Arthur Labatt Family School of Nursing, The University of Western Ontario, 1151 Richmond Street, Health Sciences Addition, Room H41, London, Ontario, Canada N6A 5C1. Electronic address: hkl@uwo.ca.
authors.forename: Heather K
authors.initials: HK
authors.lastname: Spence Laschinger
authors.affiliation: School of Nursing, Faculty of Health Sciences, The University of Western Ontario, Canada.
authors.forename: Amanda
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Nosko
authors.affiliation: Department of Paediatrics and Epidemiology & Biostatistics, Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry, The University of Western Ontario, Canada.
authors.forename: Piotr
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Wilk
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Social Science, Social Science Centre, The University of Western Ontario, Canada.
authors.forename: Joan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Finegan
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007588:Job Satisfaction; D007857:Leadership; D008297:Male; D009736:Nursing Process; D009864:Ontario; D011209:Power, Psychological; D012944:Social Support
keywords: Core self-evaluation; Empowerment; Job satisfaction; Support for practice; Unit effectiveness