Profit or Purpose: What Increases Medical Doctors' Job Satisfaction?

This study integrates two competing views to examine whether medical doctors are satisfied with their jobs when they perceive their hospitals as being oriented toward profit (i.e., rational choice theory) or purpose (i.e., public service motivation). Using a sample of 127 doctors from 70 hospitals, this study tests these competing views. The results show that doctors who perceive their hospitals as purpose-driven are likely to experience job satisfaction, and this pattern still holds even if they also perceive their hospitals to be emphasizing profits. However, only the purpose-driven orientation results in job satisfaction via a sense of meaningfulness. Thus, this study offers comprehensive evidence that while medical doctors are likely to be satisfied with their jobs when they work at either purpose-driven or profit-driven hospitals, only purpose-driven hospitals give doctors a sense of meaningfulness. This finding suggests that both rational choice theory and public service motivation perspective are valid; however, public service motivation plays a greater role in terms of a sense of meaningfulness. Theoretical contributions and practical implications are discussed.

Are Your Vitals OK? Revitalizing Vitality of Nurses through Relational Caring for Patients.

This study offers an alternative approach to address on-going concerns about burnout of healthcare employees. Departing from the existing job-demand based approach proposing that healthcare employees' burnout can be resolved by reducing demands, we theorize that patient-centered prosocial behavior, even if it often increases job demands, could serve as potential job resources that fuel positive energy to vitalize nurses at work. We further theorize that this possibility could be more pronounced among a group of nurses with a strong sense of ethical membership regarding their hospital (i.e., moral identification). To test our hypotheses, we used a sample of 202 nurses from 104 South Korean hospitals. We found that, even controlling for workloads as an indicator of job demand, nurses who engage in patient-centered prosocial behavior (i.e., relational caring) are likely to feel vitalized, and this pattern is more salient among a group of nurses with high moral identification. Results indicate that prosocial behavior could be an alternative job resource that helps nurses flourish at work.