Linking supportive leadership to satisfaction with care: proposing and testing a service-profit chain inspired model in the context of elderly care
Journal of Health Organization and Management
ISSN: 1477-7266
Article publication date: 1 March 2021
Issue publication date: 8 June 2021
Abstract
Purpose
As marketization has gained ground in elderly care, satisfaction with care has come to play a crucial role in designing for high-quality care. Inspired by the service-profit chain (SPC) model, the authors aimed to gain a deeper understanding of the intricate interplay between supportive leadership practices, organizational climate, job satisfaction and service quality in predicting satisfaction with care.
Design/methodology/approach
A Swedish sample of frontline elderly care staff (n = 1,342) participated in a cross-sectional questionnaire study. Mediation analyses were conducted to test the proposed model.
Findings
As predicted, engaging in supportive leadership practices was directly and positively associated with satisfaction with care. In addition, as predicted, this relationship was partially mediated by organizational climate and job satisfaction. Moreover, job satisfaction predicted satisfaction with care with service quality explaining a statistically significant part of this relationship.
Practical implications
Managers in elderly care services may improve satisfaction with care in multiple ways but primarily by showing that they care about the staff and ensuring that they are satisfied with their working conditions. Employee job satisfaction seems to be particularly crucial for satisfaction with care, beyond what can be accounted for by care service quality.
Originality/value
The authors proposed a novel service-outcome model. Adding to the original SPC model, the model in this study suggested previously unexplored relationships including a direct path between leadership practices and satisfaction with service and a multiple-mediator model explaining this relationship. Also, new measures of organizational climate and supportive leadership were developed for which satisfactory reliability estimates were obtained.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
It has come to the attention of the publisher that the article, Kazemi, A. and Elfstrand Corlin, T., “Linking supportive leadership to satisfaction with care: proposing and testing a service-profit chain inspired model in the context of elderly care” published in Journal of Health Organization and Management, Volume ahead-of-print, Issue ahead-of-print, was published with incorrect contact details for Ali Kazemi, the correct contact email address for Dr Kazemi is ali.kazemi@hv.se. Additionally figure 1 was incorrectly placed within the article and minor typographical errors occurred. These errors were introduced in the editorial process and have now been corrected in the online version. The publisher sincerely apologises for this error and for any inconvenience caused.
Citation
Kazemi, A. and Elfstrand Corlin, T. (2021), "Linking supportive leadership to satisfaction with care: proposing and testing a service-profit chain inspired model in the context of elderly care", Journal of Health Organization and Management, Vol. 35 No. 4, pp. 492-510. https://doi.org/10.1108/JHOM-10-2020-0393
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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