Leadership styles of Army and Civilian nurse administrators

A nonexperimental descriptive design was used to determine the differences in leadership styles between Army nurse administrators in military hospitals and civilian nurse administrators in civilian hospitals. The sample consisted of 30 nurse administrators: 15 Army nurse administrators from military hospitals throughout the United States and 15 Civilian nurse administrators from civilian hospitals throughout Texas.

Descriptive and nonparametric test were used to analyze the data. There was no significant differences in the primary and secondary leadership styles of the nurse administrators as measured by Hersey and Blanchard's (1977) Leader Adaptability and Effectiveness Description (LEAD-Self) instrument. The primary leadership style of both groups of nurse administrators was described as Selling (S2) and the secondary leadership style was described as Participating (S3).