The Correlation Between the Power Styles Used by Nurse Managers and Bullying Behaviour

Abstract

This cross-sectional, descriptive, and correlational study was conducted to determine the correlation between the perceptions of nurses about the power styles used by their managers and the bullying behaviours that are exposed to them by their managers.The sample of the study consisted of 822 nurses who worked in a public university hospital in Istanbul and agreed to participate in the study. The nurses who participated in this study evaluated the power styles used by their managers as legitimate power, reinforcing power, and coercive power, respectively. Almost half of the nurses in this study indicated that they were exposed to bullying behaviour by their managers in the last one year. It was found that current reinforcing powers of managers had an inverse effect on being exposed to bullying behaviours, whereas their legitimate and coercive powers (for head nurses) had a significant effect on being exposed to bullying behaviour. The legitimate and coercive power styles were effective in bullying behaviour and supported the presence of power inequality between the person displaying negative behaviours and the victim or abuse of power. This study revealed that nurse managers should prudently use the legitimate and coercive powers which arise from their position at a level that will not cause bullying.