The effects of perceived and preferred control on nurses' job satisfaction in long term care environments

The purpose of this study is to explore how perceived and preferred clinical control and organizational control are associated with nurses' job satisfaction in long-term care settings. A sample of 113 nurses who work in long-term care units of a community hospital or a teaching hospital completed a questionnaire that included a job satisfaction scale, an organizational control scale, and a set of vignettes specific to long-term care developed to examine clinical control. There was a positive relationship between perceived organizational control and job satisfaction and a negative relationship between preferred clinical control and job satisfaction. Furthermore, as predicted, congruence between perceived and preferred control in the clinical and in the organizational domains were related to job satisfaction. Counter to prediction, organizational control explained more variance in job satisfaction than clinical control. The challenges of conceptualizing clinical control and its measurement are discussed. (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.