Career commitment in nursing

Career Commitment in Nursing

DIANE L. GARDNER, PHD, RN*

There are different patterns and styles to careers in nursing. The concept of career commitment in nursing is explored, and the results of some research are discussed for their implications for nursing careers. A longitudinal, repeated-measures descriptive survey was used to measure career commitment and explore its relationship to turnover and work performance in 320 newly employed registered nurses at one hospital. Career commitment scores dropped significantly over the first year. Although career commitment does correlate with turnover, and there is a relationship with job performance, the direct association is weak. Career commitment is not a stable phenomenon in the first year in a new job. It appears to be susceptible to organizational factors, thus making it possible to provide positive benefits for both nurses and hospi- tals through enhanced career commitment. (Index words: Career commitment; Careers; Nursing; Perfor- mance; Turnover) J Prof Nurs 8:755-160, 7992. Copy- right 0 1992 by W.6. Saunders Company

W HY DID YOU DECIDE to go into nursing?

This simple question often provokes a flood of

response from nurses. They tell you about wanting to

be a nurse, following in the footsteps of an admired

female relative, having a steady job, or pursuing a

convenient occupational option. If nursing was chosen

deliberately as a career path, nurses most frequently

will describe a pattern of picking an educational prep-

aration and/or job prospect based on geographic prox-

imity and convenience of location to their home.

Career paths appear to be different for men and

women in our society, but traditional career concepts

have been predicated on the male model of career

progression. This results in a relative devaluing and

deprecation of female patterns. For example, women

*Assistant Professor, College of Nursing, The University of

Iowa, and Adjunct Director of Nursing, Mercy Hospital, Iowa

City, IA.

Funds for this research were provided by Division of Nursing,

Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service

Grant Nos. NUO1050-01 and NU 00812, and by the National

Center for Nursing Research, National Institutes of Health Grant

No. NR01050-03, J. McCloskey, PI.

Address correspondence and reprint requests to DC Gardner:

College of Nursing (482 NB), The University of Iowa, Iowa City,

IA 52242.

Copyright 0 1992 by W.B. Saunders Company

8755-7223/92/0803-0007$03.00/O

tend to have work interruptions during the childbear-

ing years. This may be seen as a lack of career com-

mitment and therefore is viewed as unreliability.

Women in our society still carry the primary burden

of family responsibilities. Workplace issues of how to

accommodate family responsibilities while being em-

ployed full-time have not yet been resolved. Nursing,

as a 97% female occupation, mirrors society’s values

and attitudes about careers; however, these may be

changing.

Economic pressures on women to work outside the

home as well as the national shortage of registered

nurses have evoked growing interest in career com-

mitment in nursing. It is important to individual

nurses who are planning their employment within

nursing. Career commitment is also important to or-

ganizations concerned about the recruitment and re-

tention of nurses in specific jobs. Career commitment

becomes an issue in nursing because it relates to the

attractiveness of nursing as a lifelong occupational

choice and valued career option. This article will ex-

plore the concept of career commitment in nursing

and describe the results of some longitudinal research.

Career Commitment

Career commitment in nursing is defined as the

intent to build a career that is a meaningful part of a

lifelong pursuit (Gardner, 1986). In the management

literature, career commitment was defined by Blau

(1985) as one’s attitude towards one’s profession or

vocation. It is considered to be the strength of one’s

motivation to work in a chosen career role (Hall,

1971) or the identification with and involvement in

one’s profession (Mueller, Wallace, & Price, 1990).

Commitment to a career field is different from two

other dimensions of commitment: commitment to a

job (job involvement) and commitment to an organi-

zation (organizational commitment). These latter two

forms of commitment are concerned with an employ-

ee’s loyalty to or bonding with a specific job or insti-

tution (Price & Mueller, 1981). Career, work, and

organizational commitment are distinct and different

constructs (Morrow, 1983; Mueller, Wallace, &

Journal of Professional Nursing, Vol 8, No 3 (May-June), 1992: pp 155-160 155

DIANE L. GARDNER 156

Price, 1990; Wiener & Vardi, 1980). The concept of

career commitment is relevant to nursing because

nurses spend a considerable amount of time, energy,

and money preparing for their chosen field.

The concept of commitment to work has been a

long-standing area of interest for management schol-

ars because it has been shown to be an important

variable for understanding the work behavior of em-

ployees (Mowday, Porter, & Steers, 1982). The theory

suggests that employee commitment to an organiza-

tion should be a fairly reliable predictor of behaviors

such as turnover. For the employee, weakened ties to

the organization provide a degree of freedom that

makes both psychological and physical leaving less

difficult. Research on commitment dates back to the

late 1950s. The work of Becker (1960), Dubin

(1956), Festinger (1957), Gouldner (1960), and

Lodahl and Kejner (1965) are among the oldest that

defined the field, but it was not until the 1970s that

research data on commitment began to appear. Basi-

cally, there have been two traditions in the commit-

ment literature: The first looked at commitment as an

attitude (Mowday, Steers, & Porter, 1979; Steers,

1977), and the second looked at commitment as a

behavior (Festinger, 1957; Kiesler, 197 1; Salancik,

1977).

Studies of careers and achievement have assumed that

an irregular work history signified a lack of serious career

commitment.

Career commitment appears to be similar to the

concepts of career salience (Almquist & Angrist,

197 1; Greenhaus, 197 1) and professional commit-

ment (Kraemer & Rigolizzo-Gurenlian, 1985; Shel-

don, 1971; Weiss, 1981). Morrow (1983) believed

that career salience is a useful concept in that it at-

tempts to capture the notion of a devotion to a craft,

occupation, or profession apart from any specific work

environment and over an extended period of time.

Friss (1983) defined professional commitment as char-

acterized by an unwillingness to change career, per-

sonal involvement in the work role, dedication to the

profession, pride in the occupation, and stimulation

from professional activities.

Studies of careers and achievement have assumed

that an irregular work history signified a lack of se-

rious career commitment. Quadagno (1978) studied

the meaning of work for female versus male physicians

and found that there was no significant difference be-

tween the two groups. She found that career interrup-

tions occurred for both groups, for different reasons,

and that career interruptions were relatively meaning-

less in terms of predicting career commitments.

Becker (1962) noted that most sociologists have de-

fined commitment as synonymous with consistent

Iines of activity. Ginzberg (1966) found a high cor-

relation between continuous work history and

achievement. The research on women’s occupational

motivations and aspirations generally has focused on

what Laws (1976) labeled as deficit theories about

women workers. Women were assumed to be less am-

bitious and career oriented than men; these assump-

tions were often explained in terms of early sex role

socialization (Kaufman & Fetters, 1980). Most socio-

logical literature identified women’s traditional kin-

ship responsibilities as the antecedent of their lesser

career and professional commitment (Kaufman & Fet-

ters, 1980; Pavalko, 1969).

An alternative explanation was formulated by

Mayes, Schultz, and Pierce (1968), who postulated

that career commitment may be different for women

than for men because of the different societal expec-

tations about careers and marriage for each. Hennig

and Jardim (1978) studied women managers and

found that women and men differed in their defini-

tions of a career. Women saw a career as personal

growth, self-fulfillment, satisfaction, making a con-

tribution to others, and doing what one wants to do.

Men saw a career as a series or progression of jobs

leading toward recognition and reward. Men related

the jobs that they do to their career advancement,

while women defined jobs in the present and saw a

career as a personal, individual goal. This same idea

appeared m an editorial in the Western Journal of Nurs-

ing Research (Brink, 1988). It was noted that there is

a significant difference between a job and a career.

This proposition, that your prime requirement as an

individual is to do the things that will enhance your

career and that the time and energy you put into your

job will enhance your job longevity but may not meet

your career goals, was posited by male nurses.

Reporting on the results of a large study, Buscher-

hof and Seymour (1990) found that nurses most

highly valued intrinsic forms of success, such as

achieving competence in clinical practice, satisfac-

tion, fulfillment in daily work, and making a signif-

icant impact on human welfare. Nurses do not define

success in their work primarily by the achievement of

CAREER COMMITMENT IN NURSING 157

money, power, and position. The authors postulate

that this results from barriers in the workplace to

acquiring these extrinsic forms of success. Thus,

women reject the judgment of their work by the un-

realistic male standards and redefine success in other

ways. Women seem less inclined to apply the concept

of a career to the work they do.

Career commitment takes on a more humanistic

aspect by recognizing that adults carry work, self, and

family roles. In balancing these realities, there is a

valuing of the natural diversity that results from dif-

ferent individuals choosing different career patterns to

balance these roles. Career commitment can exist out-

side of the traditional male-model linear pattern. The

challenge for organizations is to match organizational

needs to worker styles. Even advocates of the

“mommy track” for business are looking for ways to

access talented human resources within the constraints

of today’s society (Schwartz, 1989).

m . . the dimension of career

commitmenf, . . . goes beyond the importance of full-time work.

To examine career commitment in hospital nurses,

the results of a longitudinal, descriptive survey re-

search project will be described. Career commitment

was measured as one variable related to work behavior

in nursing. The purpose was to explore the level of

career commitment and to see if it changes over the

first year of work. Career commitment was also ex-

amined for its relationship to turnover and work per-

formance.

Methodology

As a part of a larger study of job satisfaction, com-

mitment, professionalism, turnover, and work perfor-

mance of newly employed hospital nurses (McCloskey

& McCain, 1987), the concept of career commitment

was investigated. Because there were no available in-

struments to measure career commitment in nursing

(Gardner, 1986), the general concepts of professional

commitment (Friss, 1983), intent to stay in the career

(Price & Mueller, 1981), value of the career choice to

the individual (Mayes, Schultz, & Pierce, 1968), cen-

tral life interest (Dubin, 1956), willingness to invest

and involve oneself in the profession (Mowday, Por-

ter, & Steers, 1982), and indicators of long-range

planning (Kleinknecht & Hefferin, 1982) were used

to form the conceptual framework for developing an

instrument to measure career commitment. Test-

retest reliability with 23 nurses was .76. Previous

work on commitment primarily used single-item

measures. In the closest related research, Young

(1984) studied professional commitment as a depen-

dent variable. She measured it as a single item called

importance of continued work in nursing full-time

after marriage. An expanded scale would more fully

capture the dimension of career commitment, which

goes beyond the importance of full-time work.

SAMPLE

All of the 350 registered nurses who joined a large,

midwestern hospital over a 15-month period were

asked to participate in the study, and 320 (91 per

cent) agreed. Nurses were followed for the first year of

work and asked to complete questionnaires at three

time periods: during the first month on the job and at

6 months and 12 months of employment. During the

first year on the job, 54 nurses (17 per cent) resigned;

of those who remained, 150 (59 per cent) completed

the study. The sample consisted of 70 (22 per cent)

associate degree nurses (ADNs), 5 1 (16 per cent) di-

ploma nurses, 188 (59 per cent) baccalaureate nurses

(BSNs), and 10 (3 per cent) master’s degree (MA)

nurses. The sample mix stayed approximately the

same by the end of the 12 months. This sample was

95 per cent female and 96 per cent white. The mean

age was 27, with 59 per cent of the nurses between 20

and 25 years old. This was the first job in nursing for

46 per cent of these subjects.

INSTRUMENTS

Career commitment was measured by the Gardner

Career Commitment Scale (Gardner, 1986), a seven-

item, Likert-type scale, with each item rated on a

five-point scale from strongly disagree to strongly

agree. Items for the total scale were summed and a

mean was derived. The higher the mean score, the

greater the level of career commitment was considered

to be. Psychometric testing with an exploratory factor

analysis resulted in a unidimensional seven-item scale.

Internal consistency using Cronbach’s alpha was .80

to .82 (Gardner, 1986).

Performance was measured by the Six Dimension

Scale of Nursing Performance (McCloskey & McCain,

1988; Schwirian, 1978) and by the hospital’s staff

nurse evaluation form (McCloskey & McCain, 1988).

The Six Dimension Scale has 52 rating scale items

clustered into six subscales: leadership; critical care;

158 DIANE L. GARDNER

teaching and collaboration; planning and evaluation;

interpersonal relations and communication; and pro-

fessional development. Cronbach’s alpha ranges re-

ported by Schwirian (1978) were from .84 to .%?; in

this study, they ranged from .90 to .96.

Turnover was collected from hospital records as ac-

tual separation from the institution.

Results

Career commitment scores were descriptively ana-

lyzed for their levels and changes over time. The mean

scores over time by highest degree of the nurse are

shown in Table 1. Career commitment scores were

initially moderately high. A repeated measures anal-

ysis of variance (ANOVA) showed that they dropped

significantly over the first year of employment. Mas-

ter’s degree prepared nurses had the highest scores,

followed by BSNs, ADNs, and diploma nurses. The

largest drop over time in mean scores occurred for

ADN prepared nurses. Career commitment does not

remain stable over the first year of a new job. Al-

though this sample contained a large proportion of

new graduates, this fmding held true for all nurses

when the results were analyzed by experience in nurs-

ing. A repeated measures ANOVA showed no statis-

tically significant relationship between educational

level and career commitment scores over time, al-

though the trend was toward a relationship (P =

.Obl; Table 2). What appears to be operating is that

career commitment is initially high when a nurse

takes a new job; however, at least over the course of

the first year, some element of job-specific frustra-

tions, such as unrealistic expectations, or job-specific

dissatisfiers, such as shift rotation, may emerge and

overshadow the idealistic aspects of a career.

The data were analyzed to determine the relation-

ship of career commitment to turnover and job per-

formance (Table 3). The results indicated that career

commitment was significantly and negatively corre-

lated with turnover at all three time periods; however,

the correlations were weak.

Career commitment also bears some relationship to

job performance (McCloskey & McCain, 1988). At

TABLE 2. Repeated Measures ANOVA for Gardner Scale Over 1 Year

Source ss df MS F P

Between groups

(ed)

Within groups

(time) Interaction

(ed by time)

4.82 3 1.61 2.51 061

2.56 2 1.28 10.48 000’

- 6 - 1.98 ,068

Abbreviations, SS, sum of squares, MS, mean square

‘P c .05

both 1 month and 12 months, career commitment

correlated significantly with the Six Dimension Scale

(both self-ratings and head nurse ratings). Further-

more, the variable of career commitment distin-

guished top and medium performers from poor per-

formers when the sample was split into top, medium,

and poor performers (McCloskey & McCain, 1988).

Thus, career commitment appears to have an effect

both on job performance and on turnover in the first

year of employment. However, the low magnitude of

the correlations suggest that there may be other mod-

erating variables operating in this relationship.

Conclusions

The literature would indicate that career patterns

are different for women than for men. Women view

their careers and the definition of success in their work

differently from men. This appears to hold true for

nursing as a predominantly female occupation. The

results of this research show that career commitment

is not a stable phenomenon, but rather it appears to be

susceptible to the influence of organizational factors,

at least over the first year of employment. If it is true

that career commitment has an important effect on

work variables such as performance, then it appears to

be important to nurture career commitment in nurses

as they progress, at least in the first year of a new job.

Nurses should be encouraged through incentives to

TABLE 3. Pearson Product-Moment Correlation Coefficients of Career Commitment With Performance and Turnover

TABLE 1. Gardner Scale Mean Scores by Highest Degree

Time ADN Diploma BSN MA Sample

Performance

Self Head Nurse Turnover Career ~__ ____.

Commitment r P r P , P

Initial 3.91 3.70 3.94 4.19 3.89 6 mo 3.84 3.39 3.81 3.82 3.73 12 mo 3.58 3.49 3.82 3.96 3 65 Total 3.78 3.53 3.82 3.99 3.65

Gardner-l mo .15 04* .16 .02’ - 12 .02* Gardner-6 mo .lO .12 - .Ol .43 ~ 12 05* Gardner-l 2 mo .17 .03’ 22 .01* - 15 .03’

“P s 05.

CAREER COMMITMENT IN NURSING

participate in professional activities and to be involved

in career planning. The performance appraisal system

could be used to provide incentives for these activi-

ties. Reward structures are key aspects for career com-

mitment. Perhaps organizations can further influence

career commitment through structures and processes

that promote professionalism and autonomy in nurs-

ing practice.

The way career commitment is viewed affects the

interpretation of work behaviors, such as career inter-

ruptions, and affects the valuing of an occupation. For

nursing, McBride (1985) finds that a career may “just

happen,” but success is made by strategically building

a career. Furthermore, we need to make visible our

value to society by uncovering the hidden work of

nursing (Wolf, 1989). This will provide for nursing

an opportunity to promote this occupation as a posi-

tive career choice for potential new nurses. Celebrat-

ing and publicizing successful nursing careers is a key

strategy.

The data base on career commitment in nursing is

in a formative stage. Basic to the understanding of

career commitment is the understanding of the reality

of career stages and patterns. Morrison and Zebelman

(1982) said that work needs, self needs, and family

needs are all interactive career needs. These needs shift

in relative priority during the adult life cycle. Fur-

thermore, careers go through at least three stages:

early, middle, and late (Raelin, 1983). Van Maanen

and Schein (1977) identified the career stages as ex-

ploration, establishment, maintenance, and decline.

Driver (1979) described four career styles as spiral or

self-actuating, linear, steady-state, and transient.

159

Ftiss (1989) identified career styles as steady-state,

linear, entrepreneurial, transient, and spiral. Applied

to nursing, she finds that nurses are a diverse group in

regard to their career styles. She recommends that

organizations establish a strategy to obtain the desired

mix of employees by career styles. Currently, there is

not a way to measure these career stages and career

patterns. Further study is needed to provide guide-

lines as to how to more precisely measure and deter-

mine the desired mix of employees by career styles.

Once we accept that nursing careers will benefit from

the valuing of diverse styles, and that career commit-

ment affects work aspects such

nursing can capitalize on career

its professionalism.

as job performance,

concepts to advance

Summary

There are different types and patterns of career

commitment. In nursing, career commitment seems

to be susceptible to organizational influences. Career

commitment is important for performance in the first

year on a new job and for turnover. Although we are

not sure how the different patterns and styles fit to-

gether in organizations, enhancing career commit-

ment in nursing will reap benefits both for individuals

and their employing organizations. As McClure

(1990) noted, nurses make choices on a continuum

from one extreme of true career orientation to the

other of minimal job commitment. We need commit-

ted professionals in nursing to make a difference for

patients.

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Career commitment in nursing