Nurse educators’ perceived organizational factors affecting their psychological empowerment: An exploratory qualitative study

Abstract

Background Organizational culture affects nurse educators’ psychological empowerment. Limited research exists on the organizational culture and psychological empowerment in nursing educational environments and about the type of organizational factors affecting nurse educators’ psychological empowerment. Aim To explore nurse educators’ perceived organizational factors that affect their psychological empowerment. Methods A qualitative descriptive exploratory study was drawn from a larger sequential exploratory‐mixed‐methods study. Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with 12 educators with both clinical and educational experience. The data were analyzed using thematic analysis. Results We generated three themes: poor organizational structure, dynamics of educators–academic administrators’ relations, and educational tools and physical environment. The educators perceived factors were poor organizational structure, lack of collaboration across institutions and regulatory bodies, condescending attitudes of administrators and educators toward novice educators, limited teaching aids and scholarly resources, poorly defined roles, and underdeveloped and inconsistent curricula. Conclusions The identified organizational factors should be addressed to enhance educators’ psychological empowerment so that they can effectively teach students. Emphasis should be placed on developing collaboration among educators, academic administrators, and regulatory bodies to address these factors. Further quantitative research is warranted to assess the degree and strength of association of these factors with psychological empowerment.

The Relationship between Organisational Factors and Teachers’ Psychological Empowerment: Evidence from Lithuania’s Low SES Schools

“…Third, in order to answer the question of how teacher psychological empowerment is associated with organisational factors, we found that all 7 studied organisational factors are related to teacher psychological empowerment in general and individual dimensions of psychological empowerment. This confirms the thoughts of other researchers (e.g., Zeb et al 2019) about the importance of organisational factors for teacher psychological empowerment and suggests that it would be more appropriate to analyse teacher psychological empowerment not at the micro, but at the macro level, taking into account the school organisational factors as an important context, promoting, facilitating psychological empowerment process or hindering it (Lee and Nie 2014). In addition, it also reflects the vision that the processes taking place in the school should be viewed as a whole, strengthening the complex integrated perspective of different organisational factors' impact on teacher psychological empowerment (Kang et al 2021).…”

“…Thus, interpersonal working relationships affect teacher psychological empowerment. The research results show that the lack of collaboration and support negatively influence teacher psychological empowerment, while institution and educator greater engagement in intra and inter collaboration foster the psychological empowerment of educators (Zeb et al 2019). The study of Khany and Tazik (2016) confirms this regularity-trust in principal and colleague is indirectly related to job satisfaction through teacher psychological empowerment.…”

“…Another important factor for teacher psychological empowerment is organisational culture. This organisational factor and its individual components greatly affect the psychological empowerment of the educators (Zeb et al 2019). The researchers claim that poor organisational structure (they distinguish this as a component of organisational culture) and unclear description of educator role and responsibilities is an obstacle to teacher psychological empowerment.…”

Mediator effects of psychological empowerment between ethical climate and innovative culture on performance and innovation in nurses

“…Moreover, Hsu and Chen (2017) supported that organizational innovation climate and psychological capital significantly and directly affect innovative employee behaviour. Similaryly, Zeb et al (2019) found that organizational culture and job satisfaction among nurses only be addressed with the enhancing psychological empowerment factor. Consequently, thus, we proposed that psychological empowerment mediates the impact of ethical climate on job performance and innovative behaviour among nurses.H1 Psychological empowerment is a mediator between ethical climate and job performance.H2 Psychological empowerment is a mediator between ethical climate and Innovative behaviour.…”

Influences of Structural Empowerment and Demographic Factors on Nurses’ Psychological Empowerment

“…Empirical studies examining the mediating role of psychological empowerment in the presence of structural empowerment as an independent variable also supported the positive relationship between structural and psychological empowerment [1,6,10,13]. In addition, Zeb et al [37] identifed three main themes that infuence nurse educators' psychological empowerment: poor organizational structure, dynamics of educators-academic administrators' relations, and educational tools and physical environment.…”