Relation between Innovation, Professionalism, Participation and Organizational Commitment for Faculty Nursing Educators

Introduction

Nursing educators are the primary source for the development of a professional identity for the nursing student and the future practitioner. Nursing education today is one of the merits of the Ministry of Higher Education. Higher education in Egypt was established to enhance the nation’s growth and the wellbeing of Egyptian people. There is a movement toward advanced nursing education in order to keep pace with today’s health demand(Shoaib & Khalid, 2017).

The Nursing Faculties in Egypt have a mission. Typically, this mission covers     teaching, research, and community service. Faculty members are the main structure of every university. Colleges and Universities need experienced educators as one of the principles for education in order to raise scientific level of students. Lack of job commitment among faculty members could threaten their physical and mental health and life quality and could prevent achieving individual and social development (Pa’wan & Omar, 2018) .

 Organizational commitment is the ability of an educator to act in such a way that meets the organization's goals and interests. Employing committed educators is essential to organizations. Commitment to an organization occurs to the extent that educators perceive some beneficial or equitable exchange relationship. Educators who feel that they are cared by their organization and managers also have not only higher levels of commitment, but they are also more conscious about their responsibilities, have greater involvement in the organization, and are more innovative(Choi, Cundiff, Kim, & Akhatib, 2018).

 Innovation is often undertaken when a gap is found in performance or when increased performance is desired. For innovation to take place, both the structural and the cultural components of the organization must be able to support change. Innovation is comprised of two components: support for innovation and resource supply(Joseph, Huber, Bair, Moorhead, & Hanrahan, 2019).

 Professionalism is an attitudinal attribute of nursing educators comprised of five factors: a professional organizational reference, a belief in service to the public, a feeling of autonomy, a belief in self-regulation, and a sense of calling to the field. Professionalization is the process of movement toward correspondence with the professional model (Guliyev, Avci, Öztüren, & Safaeimanesh, 2019).

Participation has been viewed as one means for individuals to obtain and live a meaningful life, thereby contributing to achievement of dreams and goals. Participation is often viewed as a solution when conflict, frustration, ambivalence, and indecisiveness are present. Ideas about participation in organizations originate in democratic theory and the importance of involvement in decisions about the health and well-being of individuals and societies(Lleo, Viles, Jurburg, & Lomas, 2017).

Significance of the study:

             Nursing education today is one of the merits of the Ministry of Higher Education. Higher education in Egypt was established to enhance the nation’s growth and the wellbeing of Egyptian people. There is a movement toward advanced nursing education in order to keep pace with today’s health demand. The Nursing Faculties in Egypt have a vision and mission. Typically, this mission covers teaching, research, and community service. Faculty members are the main structure of every university. Colleges and Universities need experienced educators as one of the principles for education in order to raise scientific level of students (Abdelkader and Abdel Atti, 2016).              

             The Faculty of Nursing has recently received accreditation. To maintain quality and accreditation, faculty members and their assistants should be innovative, highly professional, Participative and have a commitment. The faculty should follow up and evaluate that performance. Therefore, the present study aims to assess innovation, participation, professionalism and their relation with the commitment of faculty members and their assistants.             

Aim of the Study:

This study aimed to: Assess relation between innovation, professionalism, participation and organizational commitment for faculty nursing educators

Research Questions:

1-What is the degree of nursing educator's innovation, professionalism, participation and organizational commitment?

2-Is there a relation between innovation, professionalism, participation and organizational commitment for faculty of nursing educators?

Research Design:

                   Descriptive correlational research design was utilized to fulfill the aim of this study.

Research Setting:

              The study was conducted in faculty of Nursing – Minia University, Egypt

Research Subjects:

                The subjects of the study sample was included all educators who working in faculty of nursing during the period of data collection in the second term of academic year2019|2020. Educators who have a maternity leave or a vacation more than six month was excluded. Their total numbers consisted 118 of educators and are classify as follows:

Sampling:

Tools for Data Collection

Tools of data collection were revised by 5 panels of experts in nursing administration staffs. The data collection tool consisted of 4 tools:

The first tool: Siegel Scale of Support for Innovation

It included two parts:

Part I:  Personal DataSuch as age, gender, educational level, and years of teaching experience and position.

Part II:   Siegel Scale of Support for Innovation (SSSI tool adapted by Holliman et al., (2012). It consisted of 22 items. as follow: support for creativity subscale (8 items) , the tolerance-of-differences subscale (8 items), and support for innovation measures “the degree to which individuals view the organization as open to change, supportive of new ideas from members, and tolerant of member diversity (6 items).

The items was measured by using five-point Likert scale ranged as 5 = strongly agree, 4= agree, 3= Neutral 2= disagree, and 1= strongly disagree

Scoring System:

 Low from 22 to 51, moderate from 52 to 81, and high from 82 to 110. The higher score, the higher agreement Support for Innovation. The alpha reliabilities for this subscale averaged was 0.849

The second tool: Modified professionalism scale tool developed by Holliman et al., (2012). It consisted of 25 items. These items were grouped under five theoretical dimensions as referent (5 items), belief in public service (5 items), belief in self-regulation (5 items), a sense of calling to the field (5 items), and autonomy (5items).

The items was measured by using five-point Likert scale ranged as 5 = Very well, 4= Well, 3= Don't know, 2= Poorly, and 1= Very poorly

Scoring System:

Ranged from: 25 to 125, which categorized as following: low from 25 to 58, moderate from 59 to 91, and high from 92 to 125. The higher score, the high well professionalism. Cronbach alpha reliabilities of modified professionalism scale was 0.738

The third tool: Participation scale tool adapted by Holliman et al., (2012). It consisted of 6 items as team building activities, administrative duties, leadership activities, public relations responsibilities, committee tasks, and discipline activities.

The items will be measured by using five-point Likert scale ranged as 5 = Always, 4= Sometimes, 3= occasionally, 2= Rarely, and 1= Never

 Scoring System:

 Ranged from: 6 to 30, which categorized as following: low from 6 to 13, moderate from 14 to 21, and high from 22 to 30. The higher score,   the higher participation. The reliability coefficient of the participant scale was 0.847.

The fourth tool: Educators Organizational commitment questionnaire tool adapted by Holliman et al., (2012). It consisted of 15 items. The items will be measured by using seven-point Likert scale ranged as 5 = strongly agree, 4= agree, 3= Neutral 2= disagree and 1= strongly disagree

Scoring System

Ranged from: 15 to 75, which categorized as following: low from 15 to 34, moderate from 35 to 54, and high from 55 to 75. The higher score,  the higher commitment. Cronbach alpha reliability of the commitment instrument was 0.888. 

Validity of Tools:

After translating to Arabic the tool was tested for the face validity by a jury of 5 experts in the field of Nursing Administration. The jury composed of two Assistant Professors from Faculty of Nursing, Mina University, two Professors from Faculty of Nursing; Ain shams University and one Professor from Faculty of Nursing, Cairo University. The tool content validity was done to identify the degree to which tools supposed to be measured. Each of the expert panel was asked to examine the instrument for content coverage, clarity, wording, length, format and overall appearance. No necessary modification was done from jury panel. Reliability of Tools:

Reliability of the tool was performed to confirm consistency of tool after translating to Arabic. The internal consistency measured to identify the extent to which the items of the tool measured the same concept and correlate with each other by Cornbrash's alpha test.  The Cronbach’s alpha  for the tools categorized as follow:

Table (2): Cronbach’s alpha for the tools.

To establish validity, the questionnaire was piloted on a panel of 5 experts of  nursing administration staff, and Nursing professors who reviewed the instruments for clarity, relevance, comprehensiveness, understanding, applicability, and easiness, and will use alpha Cornbrash's way to check the stability of the internal consistency of the instrument.

Pilot Study:

 A pilot study was carried out before starting data collection on 10% of educators (12 educators) from faculty of nursing. The aim of this pilot study is to test the clarity, comprehensiveness, accessibility, and applicability of the tools and to estimate the appropriate time require filling the questionnaire.

Administrative design

An official written approval letter clarifying the purpose of the present study was obtained from the dean of the Faculty of Nursing, as approval for data collection to conduct this study also an oral informed consent was obtained from included educators in the study. It included a full explanation of the purpose of the present study, procedure, and rights for privacy and confidentiality.

Participants were recruiting from faculty of nursing. Each participant was interviewed individually after taking their consent to participate in the study and given an explanation about the nature of the study by the investigators. The time required for observation will be estimated after making of the pilot study and will collect within 6 months.

Ethical consideration:

• An official letter was granted from the research ethics committee of the Faculty of Nursing, Minia University
• Approval to conduct the study was obtained from dean of the Faculty of Nursing, Minia University
• An permission and consent was obtained from the chief person of the  nursing department.
• Consent was obtained from educators that are willing to participate in the study, after explaining the nature and purpose of the study.
• The study subject had the right to refuse to participate or withdraw from the study without any rationale at any time.
• Study subject privacy was considered during the collection of data
• Participants were assured that all their data are highly confidential.

Statistical Analysis:

•  The data obtained from the study tools were categorized, tabulated, analyzed and data entry was performed using the SPSS software (statistical package for social sciences version (22.0). 
• Descriptive statistics were applied (e.g. mean, standard deviation, frequency and percentage). Tests of significance were performed to test the study data.
• Pearson's correlation coefficient was applied between quantitative variables. A significant level value was considered when P <0.05

Results 

Table (1): Distribution of the personal data regarding to nurse educators (n=118)

Table (1) illustrates that the high percent nurse educators (53.4%) between age group (23-33) years old with mean age (32.45+7.77), and more than one third of them (38.1%) have master degree in nursing. Regarding to years of experience, more than half (54.2%) of nurse educators have years of experience ranged from (1-10) years

Figure (1): Distribution of the nurse educators regarding to their gender (n=118).

Figure (1) shows that the majority of nurse educators (91,5 %) are female.

Figure (2): Distribution of the nurse educators regarding to their position (n=118). Figure (2) ± shows that more than one third of them (38.1%) enrolled to assistant lecturer inthe facultyof nursing.

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Figure (3): Distribution of the nurse educators regarding to their departments (n=118).

Figure (3) shows that nearly one third of nurse educators (31.4%) are worked in Medical – Surgical Nursing department.

Figure (4) percentage distribution of nurse educators degree toward innovation and its dimensions (n=118).

Figure (4) illustrates that nearly two thirds of nurse educators (62.7%) have high level "support of creativity", less than half (45.8%) of them have high level "tolerance of differences", about one third (32.2%) of them have high level "support of innovation". Finally nearly two thirds of nurse educators (62.7%) have high level of total innovation.

Figure (5): Percentage distribution of nurse educator's degree toward professionalism and its dimensions (n=118).

Figure (5) shows that more than half of nurse educators (55.1%) have high level "referent", (14.4%) of them have high level "belief in public service, (17.8%) of them have high level " belief in self-regulation", less than half of them (45.8%) have high level "sense of calling to field", and more than one quarter of nurse educators (27.1%) have high level "autonomy". Finally more than half of nurse educators (52.5%) have high level "professionalism".

 In addition the same figure (5) also show (78%) of nurse educators have moderate level "belief in public service,   (64.40%) have moderate level "autonomy,   (60%) have moderate level " belief in self-regulation, (48.3 0%) have moderate level "sense of calling to the field,   (40.70%) have moderate level "referent".

 And also show dimension of nurse educators (55.10%) have low level "referent", (45.80 %) have low level "sense of calling to the field, (27.10 %) have low level" autonomy, (17.80%) have low level "belief in self-regulation, (14.40%) have low level "belief in public service

Figure (6): Percentage distribution of nurse educator's degree toward participation

Figure (6) demonstrates regarding participation that half of the nurse educators (50%) have high level of participation. Also more than one third of them (34.7%) have moderate level of participation.

Figure (7): Percentage distribution of nurse educator's degree toward organizational commitment (n=118).

Figure (7) demonstrates regarding organizational commitment that more than half of the nurse educators (61%) have moderate level of organizational commitment. Also nearly one third of them (32.2%) have high level of organizational commitment.

Table (2): Correlations between innovation, professionalism, participation and organizational commitment among nurse educators (N=118)

NS: no significant difference in between departments (p value <0.05),*: Significant difference in between departments (p value ≤ 0.05),**: highly significant difference in between departments (p value ≤ 0.001

       Table (2) illustrates that, there are positive correlation between innovation, professionalism, participation and organizational commitment among nurse educators (p=0.001).

Table (3): Correlations between personal data of nurse educators, innovation, professionalism, participation and organizational commitment (N=118)

NS: no significant difference in between departments (p value <0.05)

*: Significant difference in between departments (p value ≤ 0.05)

**: highly significant difference in between departments (p value ≤ 0.001

Table (3) illustrates that, there are positive correlation between nursing educator’s innovation and their personal data (age, qualification, years of experience, and position), there are positive correlation between nursing educator’s professionalism and their personal data (gender, qualification, years of experience, and position). Also that, there are positive correlation between nursing educators participation and their personal data except (department), there are positive correlation between nursing educators organizational commitment and their personal data (qualification).