Power distance and migrant nurses: The liminality of acculturation

Abstract

A dearth of literature focuses on the relationship between acculturation, power distance and liminality for migrant nurses entering foreign workplaces. Expectations are for migrant nurses to be practice‐ready swiftly. However, this aspiration is naïve given the complex shifts that occur in deeply held cultural beliefs and practices and is dependent on an organisational climate of reciprocal willingness to adapt and learn. This exploratory study identified that although a plethora of literature addresses challenges migrant nurses face, there are limited data that link these transitional processes to concepts that might usefully guide transitions. This study draws from the overarching concept of acculturation, together with Hofstede's (2011) notion of power distance and the theory of liminality to explore the experiences of eight migrant nurses. Data highlighted that adjusting to altered hierarchical relationships took many months because negotiating power distance challenged deeply held beliefs and assumptions about professional and organisational hierarchies. Migrant nurses’ accounts indicated a paucity of organisational processes to address these difficulties; therefore, they navigated this liminal space of adjustment to power distance differences in an ad hoc manner. Their acculturation experiences, arguably unnecessarily prolonged, indicate the value in workplace commitment to exploring a collaborative, critically reflective approach to optimise transitions.

High-Power Distance Is Not Always Bad: Ethical Leadership Results in Feedback Seeking

“…Third, it answers the call in recent work to test the boundary conditions of the ethical leadership effect (Choi et al, 2019). Specifically, this study tested the moderation role of power distance.…”

“…Like prior studies’ results, power distance affects people’s sensitivity to the ethical behavior of leaders. Nurses who work in high-power distance contexts will pay more attention to the ethical behaviors of the leader, and they will be greatly encouraged by the leader’s self-discipline and by management policies emphasizing fairness, which will, in turn, influence their work attitudes and behaviors (Choi et al, 2019). The results showed that power distance significantly moderated the relationship between ethical leadership and psychological mediating variables; for nurses who perceive high-power distance, ethical leadership had a more obvious influence on psychological safety (Peltokorpi, 2019).…”

“…Subordinates who work in greater power distance organization are more likely to trust and obey leaders, and more likely to recognize the views and behaviors of leaders (Peltokorpi, 2019). Similarly, an organization with large power distance are also more likely to accept the influence of leaders’ ethical standards on the fair atmosphere and psychological safety, which has been supported from the perspective of individual and national studies (Choi et al, 2019). For example, research conducted by Kirkman et al (2009) on the personal level shows that employees with greater power distance tend to identify and obey the behaviors of leaders more and recognize more psychological safety.…”

“…Power distance refers to the degree to which a society accepts unequal power distribution (Choi et al, 2019). Since organizational systems and procedures cannot completely restrict the behaviors of leaders, leaders have a considerable degree of subjectivity and autonomy in their daily work (e.g., task assignment, promotion, and assessment) (Peltokorpi, 2019).…”

Nursing emigration in the United Kingdom: A qualitative exploration of the Spanish nursing community

“…Over the years, important cross‐cultural research has been undertaken on nurses’ competencies or attitudes in their home countries, such as the ETHAN Project, Hart and Mareno (2013) or Martinez and Martinez (2002), cultural differences between Spanish and UK nurses and the importance of caring (Watson et al, 2003) and perceptions of nurses from both countries (Watson et al, 2002). However, in spite of some emerging findings such as Gea‐Caballero’s about Spanish nurses who plan to emigrate in a near future as a consequence of globalization, there is very little scientific understanding of what these competencies and needs involve or mean in their host countries and how these migrant nurses perceive them once they work or have worked in those countries (Choi et al, 2019; Cowan et al, 2007; Moyce et al, 2016). Although statistics and sociology have investigated the migration in a general context throughout history (Villani et al 2016), analysing the evolutionary profile of Spanish migrants to the UK since the 1960s (Morgan, 2016), it is essential to thoroughly consider these Spanish nurses’ experiences and perceptions of practising in the UK, in terms of exploring their reasons for and neediness of moving as it has been suggested previously for foreign nurses (Lee, 2016).…”