Empowerment and Job Commitment among Nursing Educators

One important factor in continuity of any organization is human resources that are considered by organizations' managers. Employee engagement and commitment are major success factors for the organizations. Empowerment heightens employees’ sense of personal control and motivates them to engage in work, which in turn results in positive managerial and organizational outcomes. Objective: To identify the relationship between empowerment and job commitment among nursing educators. Setting: The study was carried out at faculty of nursing in El-Minia University. Subjects: The study subjects included a total number of 80 nursing educators. Tool: Empowerment and Job Commitment Questionnaire was used to collect the necessary data. Results: A statistically significant positive weak correlation between empowerment and job commitment of the studied educators was revealed. Where, the studied educators had moderate level of empowerment and high level of job commitment. Conclusion: It can be concluded that self-determination was the highest ranked psychological empowerment dimension and workplace culture was the highest ranked structural empowerment dimension. Recommendations: It was recommended to develop trust, fairness, and better communication to nursing educators through good team working, respect for the roles and contributions of others.


Introduction
One important factor in continuity of organization is human resources that are considered by organizations' managers and responsible. Employee engagement and commitment are major success factors in organizations (1) . Empowerment heightens employees' sense of personal control and motivates them to engage in work, which in turn results in positive managerial and organizational outcomes (2) .
In addition, empowerment is a continuous interactive process because each individual and team that earns the power and authority applies it (3,4) . Ahmad et al. (2014) they suggests four important factors for employees' empowerment; first involving employees in decision making, second involving employees in programming process, third appreciating employees, fourth providing employees with continuous training and support (5) . Moreover, there are two dimensions of empowerment a) Structural empowerment: the perception of the presence or absence of conditions that were empowering in the workplace) and b) Psychological empowerment: the employees' psychological interpretation or reaction to these conditions) (6) . decentralization, (c) Assessment of employee concerns and ideas, (d) Creative problem-solving processes, (e) Human relations, teamwork, cohesion (7,8) .
The four components of psychological empowerment are as follows: (1) Meaning involves a fit between the needs of one's work role and one's beliefs, values and behaviors. (2) Competence refers to self-efficacy specific to one's work, or a belief in one's capability to perform work activities with skill. (3) Self-determination is a sense of choice in initiating and regulating one's actions. It reflects a sense of autonomy or choice over the initiation and continuation of work behavior and processes (e.g., making decisions about work methods, pace, and effort). (4) Impact is the degree to which one can influence strategic, administrative, or operating outcomes at work (9) . Ahmad et al. (2014) they showed a strong correlation between teachers' perception of their empowerment and their commitment to their organization, teaching, and their display of organization citizenship behavior (5) . Job commitment is an employee's "identification" and "involvement" with the organization they work in. In essence, job commitment exists when a person accepts and believes in the organization's mission and vision, and is willing to engage and participate in the organization. These individuals want to play an active role in the organization-they want to have impact, they want to feel they have some weight in the organization, and as such are willing to contribute more (10,11) . Job Commitment, and likewise, Occupational or Professional Commitment, is defined as a psychological link between the employee and their employing organization (or their profession) that may determine the stability of and adherence to their employment (12,13) .
El-Din and Abd-El-Rahman (2013) defined 3 components to job commitment: (1) Affective commitment relates to how much employees want to stay at their organization (14) . If an employee is affectively committed to their organization, it means that they want to stay at their organization. They typically identify with the organizational goals, feel that they fit into the organization and are satisfied with their work. Employees who are affectively committed feel valued, act as ambassadors for their organization and are generally great assets for organizations (14) . (2) Continuance commitment relates to how much employees feel the need to stay at their organization. In employees that are continuance committed, the underlying reason for their commitment lies in their need to stay with the organization. Possible reasons for needing to stay with organizations vary, but the main reasons relate to a lack of work alternatives, and remuneration, (3) Normative commitment is defined as an employee's sense of obligation to the organization. Normative commitment relates to how much employees feel they should stay at their organization.
Employees that are normatively committed generally feel that they should stay at their organizations. Normatively committed employees feel that leaving their organization would have disastrous consequences, and feel a sense of guilt about the possibility of leaving. Reasons for such guilt vary, but are often concerned with employees feeling that in leaving the organization they would create a void in knowledge/skills, which would subsequently increase the pressure on their colleagues. Such feelings can, and do, negatively influence the performance of employees working in organizations (14) .
The Three-Component of job Commitment was tested by Meyer et al. (2004) to explain why employees remained in an organization even if their experience was undesirable (15) . Those who perceive their experiences with the organization were meeting their expectations and satisfying their needs display affective commitmentwant to stay. Those who have made investments (years, life alterations, equity in benefits) stay because they need to in order to avoid losses and were designated as continuance commitment-need to stay. Those who feel a strong loyalty and enjoy socialization experiences see the appropriateness of staying and were normatively committed to the organization-ought to stay (16,17) .
Nursing education today is one of the merits of the Ministry of Higher Education. Higher education in Egypt was established to enhance the nation's growth and the wellbeing of Egyptian people. There is a movement toward advanced nursing education in order to keep pace with today's health demand. The Nursing Faculties in Egypt have a mission. Typically, this mission covers teaching, research, and community service. Faculty members are the main structure of every university. Colleges and Universities need experienced teachers as one of the principles for education in order to raise scientific level of students. Lack of empowerment and job commitment among faculty members could threaten their physical and mental health and life quality and could prevent achieving individual and social development. Faculty member's self-esteem, job satisfaction and organizational commitment in higher education have been given little attention by researchers in El-Minia faculty of nursing.
Furthermore, it is important to know nursing educator perceptions about their job's meaning and impact, and beliefs about their institutional commitment, promotion of nurse educator competence and selfdetermination, and information sharing. Such information may provide empirical data to aid higher education managers in creating a work environment conducive to recruiting and retaining nurse educator and may also contribute to better decisions by policymakers and others shaping nursing workforce development and nursing education systems in the future.

Aim of the Study
The aim of the present study to identify the relationship between empowerment and job commitment of nursing educators.

Research Questions:
1-Is there a relationship between nursing educators' sense of empowerment and their job commitment?
2-What are the factors affecting nursing educators empowerment?

Materials and Method
Materials Design: A descriptive-correlational design was utilized.

Setting:
The study was conducted at the Faculty of Nursing El-Minia University.

Subjects:
The study subjects comprised all nursing educators working in the previously mentioned setting and who were available at the time of data collection (N = 80).

Tool I: Empowerment and Job Commitment Questionnaire
Empowerment and job commitment questionnaire developed by Royer (2009) was used for data collection (18) . Empowerment and job commitment questionnaire was self-administered and respondents have 30 minutes to complete it. Respondents completing the questionnaire that composed of 48 items by using a 5point likert scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) to report their perceived level of empowerment, job commitment, and career change. Where one for strongly disagree, two for disagree, three for undecided, four for agree, and five for strongly agree. The questionnaire is scored by adding the items on each of the subscales:

Ethical considerations:
Written consent of the participants was obtained after explaining the purpose of the study and ensuring that their participation was strictly voluntary. Confidentiality, privacy and anonymity of the participants and their responses was assured.

Statistical Analysis
The data from the participants entered and analyzed using statistical package for the social sciences software (SPSS) for windows (version 20). Data presented using descriptive statistic in the form of frequency and percentage. Also, Pearson correlation, Chi-square, and ANOVA test was calculated to evaluate the relationship between variables. P value of  0.05 used to assess the significance of the results.

Results
Table (1) shows the distribution of the nursing educators according to their general characteristics. More than fifty percent (51.25%) of the study subjects were within the 21≤ 30 age ranges. The majority (92.5 %) were females. Moreover, regarding academic qualification of the studied nursing educators it was noticed that Baccalaureate degree represent 31.25%, Master degree represent 37.5%, Doctorate degree represent 31.25%. Furthermore, according to percent distribution of participation in the study from nursing departments it was indicated that nursing educators represent 26.25% from community health nursing, 17.5% from Medical surgical, 15% from Administration, 15% from pediatric, 13.75% from Psychiatric, and 12.5% from obstetric department. In addition, in the light of years of experience for the studied nursing educators the percent distribution was 37.75% for experience from 5 to 10 years, 33.75% for experience less than 5 years, and 28.75% for experience more than 10 years.

Discussion
Empowerment has been described as both a process and an outcome. Also, it was defined as "the interpersonal process of providing the resource, tools, and environment to develop, build, and increase ability and effectiveness of others to set and reach goals for individual and social ends. This definition aligns with the theory of structural empowerment, which relates to provision of resources, support and opportunities for learning to accomplish personal and professional goals. As an outcome, empowerment has been defined as possessing elements of self-efficacy, competency, autonomy and having meaning in ones' existence. Furthermore, Professional empowerment is a dynamic process, which occurs through interaction at the personal, professional, cultural and organizational levels. The existence of competent nurse educator who have a wide range of professional knowledge and skills, authority and self-confidence are considered essential for empowerment (19) .
The findings of present study revealed that the studied nursing educators have moderate level of all dimensions of empowerment (psychological and structural). In addition, self-determination was ranked as the highest psychological empowerment dimension and workplace culture as the highest structural empowerment dimension. This result was in agreement with Putranta (2011) who found that nurse educators had moderate levels of empowerment (20) . Also, this finding explained by Livsey (2009) who stated that in the culture of the nurse educators examined, there was a self-determination to develop educational programs, policies and procedures, and other material even if they did not receive as much support in developing the product as they would have wanted (21) . On the other hand, this finding contradicted by Devin et al. (2013) they found that the mean scores of their study subjects empowerment perception were low (22) . Moreover, these findings was also in contrast with Hosseini (2013) who found that lowest mean and standard deviation is respectively related to self-determination and competence (23) .
Furthermore, this result might be attributed to the negative perceptions regarding workplace as slow salary and the unattractive work environments. Also, desire to leave Egypt, especially to the Gulf area, looking for better salary this is considered an alarming situation for Egyptian nursing educators workforce, which is suffering from shortage of the teaching staff as the shortage is likely to put extra burden on remaining teaching staff and increase their work-related stress. Where nursing educator's workforce in El-Minia faculty of nursing were 113 and total number of nursing students were 1105 for academic year 2013/2014. Furthermore, the results of the present study demonstrated that the majority of the studied educators had high levels of all job commitment dimensions. The highest percent was found with continuance commitment, followed by affective commitment, then, normative commitment. This result agree with Abood et al. (2011) they found a high level of organizational commitment among the studied nurses. (24) Moreover, this finding in the same line with Alam et al. (2013) they mentioned that the teachers of physical education had high job commitments (25) . Additionally, El-Din and Abd-El-Rahman (2013) found that the commitment level was neither high nor low and this also is not surprising, this might be attributed to the humanistic nature of the nursing profession, whereby nurses feel they are committed to their mission regardless the compensation for achieving their duties and their satisfaction with this compensation (14) . On the other hand, this finding contradicted by Dorgham (2012) who found that the studied subjects had low commitment toward their organization, as they did not feel emotionally attached to their organization, or their organization did not deserved their loyalty (26) .
In addition, this finding might be due to lack of alternative job opportunities such as other national or international universities so they are afraid to lose their jobs. Another explanation for this results may related to other factors such as a personal characteristic and individual's sense of duty to stay with a particular organization and/or an awareness of the costs associated with leaving the organization. Moreover, academics staff are probably less limited in their capacity to move between educational institutes and other sources of employment so this might responsible for the commitment.
Furthermore, results of the present study showed that a statistical significant relationship was found between studied nursing educators demographic characteristics (age, department, qualification, and years of experience) and structural empowerment dimension. These findings supported by Nikkhah (2010) who argued that empowerment can be measured directly through education level and knowledge. Also, education has the strength to enable nursing educators to think critically and to question their disempowerment. Therefore, education could provide opportunities for nursing educators to evaluate themselves, and gradually develop self-confidence and a positive self-image so that they begin to appreciate their own capacities and potentialities (27) .
Moreover, in the presents study a statistical significant relationship was found between general characteristics studied (age, working department, nursing educators qualification, and years of experience) and their job commitment. This finding goes in congruence with Dorgham (2012) who founded that demographic factors of workers significantly correlated with organizational commitment. (26) He added that older, married, more experienced and more educated workers had higher levels of organizational commitment than the younger, single, less experienced and less educated workers. On the other hand, this finding contradict with Cherabin et al. (2012) who reported that length of teaching experience and age of teachers did not have significant influence over their organizational commitment (8) .
Additionally, this could be due to when age increase, the employee's opportunities for alternative employment decrease, this limitation of the individual's options may increase the perceived attractiveness and attachments of the current organization. Because the longer the worker stay with an organization or the older they are the more time they have to evaluate their relationship with the organization. Also, employee who have been with their employing organizations for a long time are more likely to have embedded relationships and strong organization ties and the more social ties the employee develops in the organization, the more the individual becomes attached to the organization. Moreover, years of experience are also associated with firm-specific socialization which ties the employee to a single organization and infuses core values in the employee Also, this study proved the positive relationship between empowerment and job commitment among the studied nursing educators. It revealed a highly statistical significant positive week correlation between most of empowerment dimensions and job commitment dimensions of the studied educators. This finding was consistent with Ahmad et al. (2014) they stated that it is important for organizations to put in place management systems and policies that foster an environment where employees feel empowered. An empowered work force will eventually get committed. Moreover, they indicated that teachers that believed in their own competence, ability to effect change, and impact students, actually they act according to their believes. Consequently, they also engage in more organization citizenship behavior, are more committed to and satisfied with their jobs and the schools they work for (5) . This finding also explained by Cherabin et al. (2012) they stated that training opportunities, assignment to new roles and provision of flexible working conditions are associated with job commitment and more specifically, these practices are strongly associated with the willingness to remain in the organization (8) . Additionally, employees who accurately receive information from their supervisors about their work environment, are better informed, feel an integral part of the organization, therefore the higher their commitment to the organization (28,29) .
Moreover, climates that reflect flexible working conditions may help nursing educators to become more sensitive and willing to assist one another. This cooperation facilitates cohesion among academic staff members, which in turn lead to higher involvement in, and, commitment to the organization. Moreover, psychological empowerment is associated with job commitment because a person who is able to understand and is aware of one's own feelings, and controls stress, negative emotions, and feelings of frustration, can certainly have better relationships with colleagues and supervisors, which ends in increasing job satisfaction, job commitment and better job performance.

Conclusion
 The studied nursing educators had moderate sense of empowerment and high level of job commitment.
 Positive weak to fair correlation was found between most of empowerment and job commitment dimensions of the studied nursing educators.
 There were relationship between age, education, working department, and experience of nursing educators with both empowerment and job commitment dimensions.

Recommendations
In the light of the findings of this study, the followings are recommendations:

A. Recommendations to enhance nursing educators' empowerment:
 Encourage nursing educators to attend national and international congress to enhance their empowerment.
 Nursing educators' should have continuous in-service training programs to maintain high academic standards in the teaching learning process and research.
 Provide educational opportunities for nursing educators to help them to evaluate themselves and develop selfconfidence and positive self-image through enhancing their professional knowledge and skills.

B. Recommendations to maintain nursing educators' job commitment:
 Maintain positive emotional state and secure feeling of nursing educators through appreciation and reward.
 Developing trust, fairness, and better communication to nursing educators through good team working, respect for the roles and contributions of others.
 Provide necessary facilities, support, and take actions that cater for the welfare of the nursing educators such as improve salary and increase staff number to decrease work recalled stress.

C. Recommendations for future studies:
 Replication of the study with a larger sample to further validate the results.
 Conduct a study to explore the difference between job satisfaction, empowerment, and job commitment of nursing educators in Upper and North Egypt.