Well-being, satisfaction and commitment: The substitutable nature of resources for maternity hospital nurses

Aims: To investigate the relationship between three types of organizational resources (job control, social support and organizational justice) and the impact of job demands on nurse's well‐being and attitudes towards their work.

Background: The negative impact of work‐related stress on nurse's health and attitudes towards their work has been established. Increasingly, research is focusing on the role of organizational resources in reducing the impact of work‐related stress.

Design: Cross‐sectional survey.

Method: Data collected in November 2008 from 226 Australian nurses and midwives were analysed using the full Job Strain Model with the addition of organizational justice variables. Multiple regression analyses explored the relationships among job control, job demands, three sources of social support and four types of organizational justice on well‐being and work attitudes.

Results: The overall regression models explained a significant amount of variance in well‐being, job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Significant main effects were evident for support variables and organizational justice variables on well‐being and job satisfaction. Interactions between job control and supervisor support and between job demands and supervisor support were evident for job satisfaction.

Conclusions: Supervisor support and organizational justice have significant relationships with nurses' well‐being and job satisfaction. More broadly, the findings suggest that, in the triple‐matching approach from a work‐stressor to a resource to a work outcome, personal, supervisory and organizational resources may be substitutable. These findings provide nurse management with empirical endorsement for the development and delivery of the organization's resources for nursing staff.