NEW PUBLIC MANAGEMENT, ROLE TENSIONS AND STRESS IN NURSE MANAGERS

Abstract

In recent decades, the management of
hospitals has continued to evolve in order to face
to a crisis of human and financial resources. These
changes have had consequences in particular on
the role of care actors. The aim of this article is to
analyse the relationships between the perception of
changes in link with the New Public Management,
the role tensions perceived by nurse managers, and
their impact on job stress, by mobilizing the role
theory and the model of Demerouti et al. (2001). In
order to provide some answers, an empirical study
was conducted among 445 nurse managers through
several French public hospitals. The results of the
research indicate that the perception of changes in
link with the New Public Management favors digressively, the role conflict, the quantitative workload,
then the work-family conflict. In addition, the study
makes it possible to analyse the degree of influence of
each type of role tensions in terms of job stress. The
results reveal that the quantitative workload seems
to be the most important predictor of the interviewed
nurse managers’ job stress, while the emotional
workload seems to reduce the job stress.