Supervisor Relationships, Teamwork, Role Ambiguity and Discretionary Power: Nurses in Australia and the United Kingdom

This paper reports comparative research comparing the relationship between supervisor-subordinate relationships, teamwork, role ambiguity and discretionary power for nurses working in public and private sector hospitals in Australia and the UK. The findings indicate that the four factors accounted for approximately a quarter of the variance for nurses in the UK and almost a fifth of the variance for nurses working in public sector hospitals. Moreover, the findings identify a significant difference across all variables for nurses working in public sector hospitals compared with private sector with nurses in the private sector having higher satisfaction levels and perceiving lower levels of role ambiguity. There were fewer differences for nurses working in Australian hospitals compared with UK hospitals with nurses in Australia perceiving a better supervisor-subordinate relationship and nurses in the UK perceiving greater satisfaction with teamwork.