Leadership behavior of health managers in İzmir Turkey

LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOR OF HEALTH MANAGERS IN İZMİR TURKEYABSTRACTIntroduction and Objective: The aim of this study is to identify the leadership behaviors of health managers and to determine the manager types in İzmir governmental health facilities.Methods: This research is a cross-sectional study and target population of the study is 395 health managers who is working in İzmir province and 57% of the target was reached. In this study ?Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire? which was originally prepared at Ohio State University was used. The validity and reliability of the scale was analyzed in 1981 at TODAİE by Ergun.Findings: 63% of managers is male and 64% of the managers is physician. According to the Ohio State Leadership Behavior Scale, 64% of health managers is weak manager (work and employee orientation is very low), 15% is strong manager (work and employee orientation is very high), 12% is democrat manager (employee orientation is high and work orientation is low) and 8% is autocratic manager (work orientation is high and employee orientation is low). There is a statistically significant between male and female managers. While 23% of female managers and 11% of male managers is strong manager, 71% of male and 51% of female is weak manager (p=0.005). There is no statistical significance between working place (primary health care, hospitals etc), age, education, duration of employment, duration of management, having post graduate education, over working, having additional tasks, number of employee, having management training and training needs (p values are respectively 0,927; 0,159; 0,173; 0,907; 0,877; 0,748; 0,834; 0,719; 0,876; 0,166; 0,187).Conclusions and Recommendations: This results show that governmental health managers are inadequate in terms of dominating work, mobilizing institution, integration of the objectives, organization, production, protection of employees, representation of organization, recognition of employees and communication. Only 15% of managers are enough according to these properties. The reason of difference between female and male managers may be due to provide a better balance between work and employee by female managers. The appointment of health managers and managerial training processes should be assessed and organized again.Key Words: Leadership Behavior Description Questionnaire, Leadership, Leader Types