Influence of head nurses'paternalistic leadership style on the organizational silence of nurses

LI Xiang; LI Linbo; CHAI Yunhua; HE Xingyue; YANG Erming; BO Enhui; YANG Hui

doi:10.12102/j.issn.1009-6493.2025.20.004

Abstract：Objective:To explore the influence mechanism of the paternalistic leadership style of head nurses on the organizational silence of nurses.Methods:By using the convenience sampling method,a total of 558 nurses from 3 hospitals in Taiyuan city,Shanxi province were selected as the research subjects.The questionnaire survey was conducted using the Paternalistic Leadership Style Scale,the Occupational Calling Scale,the Nurses'Organizational Silence Questionnaire and the Team Psychological Safety Atmosphere Scale.Results:The score of organizational silence for clinical nurses was 53.58±16.88 points.The score of occupational calling was 46.21±9.63 points.The score of team psychological safety atmosphere was 55.67±7.45 points.The score rates of the dimensions of benevolent leadership,moral leadership and authoritative leadership in the paternalistic leadership style were 77.8%,80.8%and 57.9%respectively.The overall tendency of the paternalistic leadership style was towards moral leadership.The results of the correlation analysis showed that moral leadership was negatively correlated with organizational silence(P<0.05),positively correlated with occupational calling(P<0.05).Occupational calling was negatively correlated with organizational silence(P<0.05).Occupational calling had partial mediating effect in moral leadership and organizational silence,with an effect value of-0.093,accounting for 19.5%of the total effect.The team psychological safety atmosphere played a moderating role(P<0.05).Conclusions:The moral leadership in paternalistic leadership could negatively influence the organizational silence of nurses.Occupational calling played a mediating role,and the team psychological safety atmosphere had a moderating effect.