Organizational model, job satisfaction, and productivity of nursing faculty in academic health centers.

This descriptive correlational study documented types of organizational models currently in place in schools of nursing in academic health centers, and explored relationships of the models to the productivity and job satisfaction of 429 nursing faculty. The study was conducted in two phases: (a) the measures of the organizational model and productivity were developed and tested, organizational charts were collected from nursing schools in academic health centers and analyzed using a Separation-Unification Scale developed by the investigator, and a sample of twenty schools was selected from three groups (unification, collaboration, and separation) based on the level of interinstitutional relationships; and (b) a survey questionnaire was distributed to and collected from all faculty members in the 16 consenting schools. The survey included the Porter Need Satisfaction Questionnaire, five indices of professional activities, and the Separation-Unification Scale to determine perceptions of interagency relationships. The results revealed that the unification model had not been widely adopted, and that the distinctions identified in the literature as characteristic of unification and collaboration models were not included in the formal organizational charts of most of the schools of nursing. The nursing faculty members perceived greater levels of interaction with their colleagues in affiliated teaching hospitals than were apparent in the formal documents. Univariate comparisons of the three groups of faculty members for job satisfaction and productivity revealed that the faculty teaching in unification sites were significantly more satisfied with their jobs and their institutions and were more productive than were the faculty members teaching in collaboration and separation sites. These apparent differences were not statistically significant when the variables were entered into discriminant analyses that controlled for personal and professional demographic characteristics. In the multivariate analysis, only rank and tenure differentiated the faculty members in the unification group. The findings suggest the need for further analysis of the formal and informal relationships in nursing schools. In addition, further investigations should consider variations in workload patterns and the effect of other organizational characteristics such as geographic location on the productivity and job satisfaction of nursing faculty.