Moderating-mediating Effects of Leader Member Exchange, Self-efficacy and Psychological Empowerment on Work Outcomes among Nurses

Abstract Background: The main effects of leader-member relationship and the quality of supervisor-subordinate relationship are emphasized as main variables that help improve nurses’ job satisfaction and reduce exhaustion. The aim of this study is to examine the effects of the emotional intelligence, self-efficacy, and psychological empowerment on psychological exhaustion and job satisfaction of nurses using moderation-mediation effects of leader-member exchange (LMX). Methods: A cross-sectional design was carried out in three public-sector hospitals in north west of Iran during 2016. A total of 138 self-administered questionnaires were used for analysis. The main hypotheses of this study were analyzed through applying mediation-moderation analysis using PROCESS model. Results: The results revealed that LMX acted as a mediator between emotional intelligence and job satisfaction through converting its negative effect into positive one. The indirect effect of emotional intelligence on emotional exhaustion through leader-member exchange was strongly negative especially at higher levels of leader-member exchange. Conclusions: High quality relationships between nurses and their superiors could improve their job outcomes. The negative relationship between emotional intelligence and emotional exhausting was more significant when leader-member exchange was taken into account. High emotional intelligence in nurses has negative effect on job satisfaction but by mediating role of LMX the effect changed to positive. LMX partially mediated the effect of emotional intelligence on job satisfaction, except when self-efficacy values were quite large. Psychological empowerment did not significantly moderate the relationship between emotional intelligence, leader-member exchange, and job outcome. Implications for nursing managers: It is recommended to analyze the quality of leader-member exchange in the hospitals before using them for measurement of nurses’ satisfaction and their jobs’ outcomes. Managers should also concentrate more on leader-member exchange and try to improve its quality. Future studies are needed to investigate the effects of leader-member exchange quality in longer follow-up periods.