Relationships Between Empowerment, Job Satisfaction, and Organizational Commitment Among Physical Therapists

물리치료사의 임파워먼트와 직무만족, 조직몰입과의 관계

The aim of the study was to analyze the relationship between empowerment, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment among physical therapists. Currently, healthcare is changing very rapidly with developments in science and technology. In response to these rapid and uncontrollable changes, organizational members are often empowered. Through the empowerment process, feelings of powerlessness and frustration can be reduced and factors promoting work performance, such as job satisfaction and organizational commitment could be enhanced. One said this term popularly, there was a lack of study. There have been few studies on physical therapy administration. Data was collected from 352 therapists from many hospitals from February 1 to February 28, 2008, and analysis of variance, Pearson's correlation, etc., were performed. The results were as follows: Of all the characteristics of empowered subjects, gender (p<.05) and age were observed to be significantly different (p<.01). Educational background, working pattern, marriage status, and the period of duty were observed to be different among empowered therapists (p<.001). The degree of empowerment as perceived by therapists was 58.72. Empowerment was correlated with job satisfaction and organizational commitment (p<.01). The study on empowerment was significant from the aspect of strategies to increase work performance. To elucidate the optimal strategy to effectuate empowerment in clinical practice, we studied various aspects of empowerment. Further studies on the relationship between empowerment and organizational commitment are warranted.