Exploring Leadership Team Behaviors and Subordinate Employee Attitudes in VA Hospitals

Abstract

A top management team (TMT) is an integral component of an organization as it serves the role of a primary leader. The dynamics between TMTs and their subordinate organizational units are similar to those between individual leaders and their subordinates in that both (TMTs and individual leaders) exert a level of influence over their subordinate entities. This study sought to investigate a TMT's influence as a leader within the organization, by applying the two-factor leadership theory to the relationship between TMTs and subordinate units. All but three examined workplace climate measures were significantly related to TMT behaviors. Organizational culture exhibited the strongest relationships, with all significant correlations ranging between 0.17 and 0.27. Our findings suggest that the composition of hospital TMTs can have implications for units providing direct care to patients. These findings may be of particular interest to administrators who are involved in building effective TMTs.

100 Years of Scientific Evolution of Work and Organizational Psychology: A Bibliometric Network Analysis From 1919 to 2019

“…The focus of workplace-related research is to understand the impact of the work environment on workers’ health, satisfaction and engagement. Authors addressed stress management strategies ( Joseph et al, 2019 ), job satisfaction and performance ( Pang and Ruch, 2019 ), work motivation and quality of work-life ( Kocman and Weber, 2018 ), leadership team behaviors ( Yanovsky et al, 2014 ) and organizational socialization ( Cooper-Thomas et al, 2011 ) among others. Research related to the workplace continues to increase due to organizational changes, such as industrial revolutions that alter the organizational processes and skills required of workers.…”

Workplace bullying among mental health providers with lived experience of a mental health challenge.

“…Existing, empirically validated models for organizational interventions for workplace climate are available (e.g., Osatuke, Leiter, Belton, Dyrenforth, & Ramsel, 2013; Osatuke, Moore, Ward, Dyrenforth, & Belton, 2009) and have been shown to result in sustained improvements in health care settings (e.g., Leiter, Day, Oore, & Spence Laschinger, 2012; Leiter, Laschinger, Day, & Oore, 2011). Given the demonstrated impact of leadership teams’ interpersonal behavior on subordinate staff attitudes (Yanovsky, Osatuke, Shoda, & Ramsel, 2014), it is possible that including providers with lived experience in management and decision-making may help identify strategies and techniques for reducing the bullying behavior.…”

Measuring executive leadership teaming dynamics for leading learning organizations.

“…The ETA is a measure of teaming behaviors specifically designed for ELTs in the VA that guages individual perceptions of team performance. The initial development of the ETA began a literature review on high-performing teams, teaming, team assessment frameworks, employee engagement, and learning organizations (Yanovsky et al, 2014). The synthesis of this literature originally resulted in a two-factor model (Team Relationships and Team Functions) with 39 items rated on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 ( strongly disagree ) to 5 ( strongly agree ; Yanovsky et al, 2014).…”

“…The initial development of the ETA began a literature review on high-performing teams, teaming, team assessment frameworks, employee engagement, and learning organizations (Yanovsky et al, 2014). The synthesis of this literature originally resulted in a two-factor model (Team Relationships and Team Functions) with 39 items rated on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 ( strongly disagree ) to 5 ( strongly agree ; Yanovsky et al, 2014). Team Relationships comprised items related to civility, respect, psychological safety, and cohesiveness.…”

“…When top leaders understand their own level of engagement, learning, and process improvement among themselves as a team, they can have maximal downstream impact on other leaders who need to engage in similar continuous development to shape the workplace to the point of excellent veteran care and services. In fact, an initial analysis of the ETA (Yanovsky et al, 2014) found that when comparing the ETA results with results from the VA All Employee Survey (AES; Osatuke et al, 2012), a nationally applied organizational health assessment, “leadership at the top matters.” The findings from this analysis suggested that the behaviors of the top executive health-care leadership teams, as measured by the ETA, were significantly correlated with middle manager satisfaction, perceptions of coworker support, and their views of the organizational climate and culture. These results are well aligned with other research indicating that ELTs have substantial impact within a health-care system (Carmeli et al, 2011) and that the functioning of these senior leadership teams sets the tone for the overall functioning of the organization (Alimo-Metcalfe et al, 2008).…”