| Physicians and healthcare administrators may use different leadership styles due to their training and expected roles and responsibilities. Where physicians are trained to be surgeons and teachers, healthcare administrators are trained to be business minded and financially savvy. What is unclear is how these differences may relate to support staff well-being and workplace relationships. The purpose of this quantitative, non-experimental study was to explore the impact of leadership styles of physicians and healthcare administrators on the support staff. The study was grounded in leadership and organizational dynamics theories from theorists such as Avolio, Bass, Hodgkinson, Webb, and Zaccaro. The leadership styles of 50 administrators and 50 physicians were measured with the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ). The workplace relationships and employee well-being of 134 support staff in a clinical department of a major research hospital in Chicago was measured with the Copenhagen Psychosocial Factors at Work Questionnaire (COPSQ). Both instruments were distributed online. Although the MLQ results indicated that transformational and transactional leadership styles were practiced by the physicians and administrators, no significant differences between the groups were found. However, strong positive transformational leadership styles were found between workplace relationships, employee well-being, morale and motivation. Significance and social change implications of the study include a better understanding of the relatively unexplored domain of leadership in the healthcare profession and its possible impact on improved workplace environment and support staff well-being in the system. |
