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Recent government proposals seek to extend the role of nurses into management at a time of (yet another) cultural transformation for the British National Health Service (NHS). This is especially the case for line managers involved in service‐delivery, ward managers and clinical nurse managers for instance, roles typically undertaken by senior nurses. This paper aims to give some insight into the role of nurses as managers in the NHS hospital service. Data presented were collected as part of a longitudinal qualitative study, 1994 to date, in a North West trust hospital. The role of ward and unit management has significantly changed since the early images of the nurse as manager and it is hardly surprising that, given the fundamental shift in the framework of values and attitudes, senior nurses have greeted the management role with mixed feelings.

The purpose of this paper is to propose and test a model of the underlying mechanisms linking perceived availability of human resource (HR) practices relevant to older nurses and older nurses’ intentions to stay with their hospitals.

Quantitative data were collected from randomly selected older registered nurses (N=660) engaged in direct patient care in hospitals in Canada. Structural equation modelling was used to test the hypothesized model.

The relationship between perceptions of HR practices (performance evaluation, recognition/respect) and intentions to stay was mediated by the perceived fairness with which nurse managers managed these HR practices and nurse manager satisfaction. When nurse managers were perceived to administer the HR practices fairly (high perceived procedural justice), older nurses were more satisfied with their nurse manager and, in turn, more likely to intend to stay.

The cross-sectional research design does not allow determination of causality.

It is important that nurse managers receive training to increase their awareness of the needs of older nurses and that nurse managers be educated on how to manage HR practices relevant to older nurses in a fair manner. Equally important is that hospital administrators and HR managers recognize the importance of providing such HR practices and supporting nurse managers in managing these practices.

The findings increase the understanding of how HR practices tailored to older nurses are related to the intentions of these nurses to remain with their hospital, and especially the crucial role that first-line nurse managers play in this process.

This study aims to investigate the perception of nurse managers and staff nurses regarding the transformational leadership (TL) style of nurse managers and determine the effects of the TL practices on organizational commitment and job satisfaction of staff nurses.

This cross-sectional and descriptive study was conducted with 153 nurses (17 nurse managers and 136 staff nurses) working in a university hospital. Data were collected from participants through a demographic questionnaire, leadership practices inventory (self/observer), organizational commitment scale and job satisfaction scale.

The self-assessment of the TL practices of the nurse managers were more favourable than the assessment of the leadership practices made by staff nurses. The TL practices of the nurse managers accounted for 9% of the total organizational commitment and 24% of the total job satisfaction of the staff nurses.

The results indicated that leadership practices by nurse managers need to show greater awareness of the effects of these leadership practices on the organizational commitment and job satisfaction of their staff nurses. Hospitals need to consider how they develop, support and encourage because of the positive impact TL has on health priorities and retention of staff.

First‐line nurse managers in the Canadian healthcare system are facing many challenges due, in large part, to reduced funding for healthcare since the early 1990s and the accompanying reorganization and downsizing of healthcare organizations that leave nurse managers with greater pressures to do more with less. A two‐round Delphi study was conducted with a panel of 41 Canadian nurse managers selected from hospitals, with at least 100 beds, in the province of Alberta. The Delphi study examined current and future management training and development (MTD) for first‐line nurse managers in light of their challenges and changing roles. The aim was to identify major recommendations for health care administrators and educators to prepare and support first‐line nurse managers effectively in the future. Findings underscored the need for management skills training, especially human resource management and budgeting skills. Given the resource constraints of healthcare organizations, cost‐efficient recommendations are presented for MTD.

Aims to provide a brief discussion of discourses of HRD, then a brief review of HRD within the NHS, including stakeholders in HRD, and particularly management development. To explore some of the different discourses used by different managers, particularly those with a nursing background and those without, and the possible reasons for the use of these different discourses.

A qualitative case study approach was adopted, including semi‐structured interviews. Primary research data were collected from tape‐recorded interviews with seven Directorate General Managers from two Welsh NHS Trusts. Discourse analysis was used to explore connections between the participants, the discursive resources they employed and their professional identities.

Provides evidence of some of the tensions associated with management development in the NHS, between professional and managerial development, between central and local HR activities, and between competition and cooperation. A particularly interesting dimension is the transition from being a nurse to becoming a manager and the ways in which different individuals cope, as articulated in their language use. Highlights some of the discursive struggles to maintain one's professional (nursing) identify when promoted to managerial positions. It provides examples of some nurses who have adopted the new managerial discourse without such apparent difficulty of changed identity. It also presents material from NHS managers who have no nursing background to enable further comparative analysis of the relationships between identity and discourse.

The findings are limited by small sample size, although feedback suggests the findings can be generalised to other NHS Trusts across the United Kingdom, and possibly globally. Not one senior manager used the term HRD – it was always “training and development” or “professional development” or “managerial and organisational development” and sometimes “learning”. Nor was there much use of the government's preferred term “workforce development”. This has implications for HRD research within this context, suggesting the need for shared understanding amongst researchers and participants.

Various and varying discourses and associated discursive resources are identified, illustrating the diversity of talk about HRD within the NHS. As one DGM commented, “I think we're using the same words but it means something completely different”. This has practical implications, suggesting the need for shared understanding amongst HRD stakeholders to ensure a coherent and integrated approach to HRD within this complex multi‐disciplinary context.

How HRD is talked about and accomplished through talk has been relatively neglected in the health care context. This paper contributes to our understanding of how the complex range of learning and development activities are perceived and articulated, from the perspective of senior managers responsible for HRD.

Hospital nurse managers are in the middle. Their supervisors expect that they will monitor and discipline nurses who commit errors, while also asking them to create a culture that fosters reporting of errors. Their staff nurses expect the managers to support them after errors occur. Drawing on interviews with 20 nurse managers from three tertiary care hospitals, the study identifies key exemplars that illustrate how managers monitor nursing errors. The exemplars examine how nurse managers: (1) sent mixed messages to staff nurses about incident reporting, (2) kept two sets of books for recording errors, and (3) developed routines for classifying potentially harmful errors into non-reportable categories. These exemplars highlight two tensions: the application of bureaucratic rule-based standards to professional tasks, and maintaining accountability for errors while also learning from them. We discuss how these fundamental tensions influence organizational learning and suggest theoretical and practical research questions and a conceptual framework.

To explore whether ward management is an aspiration for junior nurses and midwives in the National Health Service in Scotland (NHSS) in the context of service redesign that is expanding career options in clinical practice.

The findings are drawn from research conducted in a large acute NHSS Trust. The fieldwork involved face‐to‐face interviews with 64 nurses and midwives and 1,084 survey returns (29 per cent response rate). Logistic regression was used to predict the characteristics of those who wanted to move into their line manager's role.

Moving into their line manager's job was a career aspiration for only 10 per cent of nurses and midwives and current managers reported there were already difficulties recruiting to senior posts. Those who wanted vertical progression preferred the clinical specialist/advanced practitioner route. By comparison, the ward manager (charge nurse) role was perceived to be very unattractive because of: too little patient contact; the stress involved in meeting the workload demands of multiple roles; and poor pay and rewards.

The research and policy review covers the devolved NHSS though similar trends have been noted elsewhere in the UK and internationally. The paper is of broader interest to those interested in the impact of managerial responsibility on healthcare professionals.

The paper highlights the need for reform in the ward leadership role since it is pivotal in the operation of hospital services.

Previous research has examined the role of nurses in managing healthcare services. The paper extends this retrospective work by exploring the perceptions and career intentions of the nurses and midwives serving under the current generation of nurse managers.

First-line nurse managers are frequently torn between conflicting demands from management and employees, and previous research suggests that nurse managers use a variety of responses to cope with these demands. The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of social support on nurse managers’ responses to role-conflict.

Two focused ethnographic studies involving participant observation and interviews with seven first-line nurse managers were completed. One study included first-line nurse managers from four units in two municipalities (2005), while the second included three first-line nurse managers from a hospital in Norway (2015-2016).

Three types of responses were identified: the embracing managerialism career, the emphasising managerialism career and the emphasising professionalism career. Emphasising managerialism was associated with role distance from the role of nurse, whereas emphasising professionalism involved role distance from the managerial role.

This study provides insights into first-line nurse managers’ responses to role conflict, by identifying the mechanisms involved and an opportunity to develop a theoretical framework for future studies among nurse managers.

Performance management is criticised as a direct challenge to the dominant logic of professionalism in health care organisations. The purpose of this paper is to report an ethnographic study that investigates how performance management and professionalism as contradicting logics are interpreted and implemented by managers and nurses in everyday practice within Norwegian nursing homes.

The paper presents an analysis of 18 semistructured interviews and 100 hours of observation of managers and nurses from three nursing homes. The study draws on the institutional logic perspective as a theoretical framework. In the analysis, the authors searched for patterns of activities and interactions that reflected managers and nurses’ coping strategies for handling contradicting logics. Qualitative content analysis was used to systematically code the data, supported by NVIVO software.

The authors identified three forms of coping strategies: the adjustment of professionalism to standards, the reinforcement of professional flexibility and problem solving, and the strategic adoption of documentation. These patterns of activities and interactions reflect new organisational structures that allowed contradicting logics to co-exist. The study demonstrates that a new complex dimension of governing processes within nursing homes is the way in which managers and nurses handle the tension between contradicting logics in their daily work and clinicians’ everyday practice.

The study provides new insight into how managers and nurses reshape internal organisational structures to cope with contradicting logics in nursing homes.

The purpose of this paper is to share preliminary evidence about nurse managers’ (NMs) role stressors and coping strategies in acute health-care facilities in Western Canada.

A qualitative exploratory inquiry provides deeper insight into NMs’ perceptions of their role stressors, coping strategies and factors and practices in the organizational context that facilitate and hinder their work. A purposeful sample of 17 NMs participated in this study. Data were collected through individual interviews and a focus group interview. Braun and Clarke’s (2006) six phase approach to thematic analysis guided data analysis.

Evidence demonstrates that individual factors, organizational practices and structures affect NMs stress creating an evolving role with unrealistic expectations, responding to continuous organizational change, a fragmented ability to effectively process decisions because of work overload, shifting organizational priorities and being at risk for stress-related ill health.

These findings have implications for organizational support, intervention programs that enhance leadership approaches, address individual factors and work processes and redesigning the role in consideration of the role stress and work complexity affecting NMs health.

It is anticipated that health-care leaders would find these results concerning and inspire them to take action to support NMs to do meaningful work as a way to retain existing managers and attract front line nurses to positions of leadership.