Personal Factors, Emotional Intelligence, Working Environment, and Adaptive Leadership of Head Nurses, Private Hospitals, Bangkok Metropolis

Abstract

The purposes of this descriptive study were to study the adaptive leadership of head nurses, to examine the relationships between personal factors, emotional intelligence, working environment and adaptive leadership, and to determine variables which could predict adaptive leadership of head nurses. Subjects consisted of 229 head nurses in private hospitals, Bangkok Metropolis. Research instruments were the questionnaires of personal factors, emotional intelligence, working environment, and adaptive leadership which were tested for content validity. The reliability of the questionnaires which were tested using Cronbach’s alpha coefficient were .89, .91, and .94, respectively. Data were analyzed by percentage, mean, standard deviation, contingency coefficient, Pearson’s product moment correlation coefficient, and stepwise multiple regression.

Major findings were as follows:

1. Adaptive leadership of head nurses in private hospitals, Bangkok Metropolis was at high level.
2. Personal factors in term of education level was significantly related to adaptive leadership at the .05 level (c = .19), emotional intelligence and working environment were positive significantly related to adaptive leadership at the .05 level (r = .57 and .60, respectively)
3. Variables that could predict adaptive leadership of head nurses at .05 level were emotional intelligence and working environment. These predictors accounted for 50.9 percents of variance (R² = .509). The standardized function derived was as follow:

Adaptive leadership = .600 (Working environment) + .591 (Emotional intelligence)