NURSING ACADEMIC STAFF ENGAGEMENT IN WORK AGAINST TRADITIONAL AND INNOVATIVE LEADERSHIP STYLES

Aim: Study the relationship between nursing academic staff engagement in work and traditional and innovative leadership styles. Background: Work engagement contributes to immersion of people in work with high level of energy caring about doing it as better as possible and the cautious of its quality with sense of enthusiasm and pride, targeting to high level of performance and better product/output. So, taking measures to achieve it is a requirement for successful organization and individuals. This requires a leadership not only with certain characters but basically certain practices that inspire, motivate and facilitate people/workforce engagement in work. Methods: Utrech Work Engagement Scale was used to assess work engagement of all nursing assistant teaching staff in addition to a leadership styles questionnaire to determine leadership styles of nursing academic managers either traditional or innovative. Results: Both work engagement and leadership styles were in average levels and practices. There was no significant correlations between work engagement and leadership styles whether the traditional or innovative ones. Conclusion and implications: There is no dominant leadership style/s whether the traditional or innovative. That could be good, but when combined with average level of work engagement revealed no significant correlations. This means that work engagement level should be improved mainly based on/geared to vigor and dedication improvement measures.