Date of Conferral

2016

Degree

Ph.D.

School

Management

Advisor

Jeff Prinster

Abstract

A gap exists in scholarship on how transformational leadership inspires healthcare workers in the eastern United States, which is important as healthcare costs are approximately 20% of the United States gross domestic product and rising. Improved healthcare performance may contribute to cost containment or even cost reductions. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore and describe the lived experiences of employees working for a transformational leader in a healthcare facility in the eastern United States. The conceptual framework was Bass's transformational leadership theory and von Bertalanffy's general systems theory. The overreaching research question asked how transformational leadership affected employees' perceived work performance and job satisfaction in a healthcare organization in the eastern United States. Twenty employees from a healthcare facility participated in the study. Data were collected via face-to-face and Skype interviews and were analyzed by hand using open- and axial-coding techniques, then validated by member checking. Study results showed that transformational leadership might help meet follower's psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness in this eastern United States healthcare facility. This study may help raise social awareness of the importance of transformational leadership and compel more organizations in healthcare and other industries to apply transformational leadership, thereby contributing to the prosperity of the organization, their employees, their families, communities, and the local economy through cost containment of products and services.

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