Attitudes of staff members towards development of elder care organizations

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate how perceived leadership effectiveness is related to staff members’ attitudes towards development of elderly care organizations in private and public institutions. Design/methodology/approach A cross-sectional quantitative survey was conducted using self-report questionnaire that contained Modified Leadership Effectiveness Questionnaire (Heck et al., 2000), the scale of attitude towards change from Preziosi’s Organizational Diagnosis Model (1980) and organizational development intentions measure developed for the study. The respondents were 510 Lithuanian social workers and other staff members employed in different public and private elderly care organizations. Findings The results revealed that perceived higher leadership effectiveness was associated with more positive employees’ judgements on organization’s readiness to change both in private and public sector elderly care organizations. But perceived leadership effectiveness was not associated with staff members’ intentions to change. Also it was found that different models for private and public sector that explained the importance of particular leadership behaviours in the prediction of employees’ judgements on organizational change and intentions to change were valid. Originality/value This study may add to further broaden knowledge on attitudes of staff members towards development of elderly care organization and the role of leadership effectiveness taking into account the type of organization.