Shared governance and normative power of middle nurse managers

This nonexperimental, ex post facto study was conducted to determine if there was a difference between the amount of normative power reported by middle nurse managers in organizations with shared governance and the amount of normative power reported by middle nurse managers in organizations without shared governance. The theoretical framework was Etzioni's (1975) compliance theory, with the concept of normative power derived directly from this theory.

Data were collected through questionnaires completed by 103 middle nurse managers (50 subjects in the shared governance group and 53 subjects in the non-shared governance group). A t-test for independent samples was used to analyze the data. The results indicated that there was a significant difference in normative power between middle nurse managers in organizations with shared governance and those without (t(97) = 2.03, p =.022). These findings suggest that the implementation of a shared governance structure does significantly increase the power reported by middle nurse managers.