What Determines the Engagement of Nurses in Organizational Learning Post Covid-19? The Role of Street-Level Bureaucracy and Florence Nightingale Theories

Abstract

This paper aims to explore what has caused nurses to engage in organizational learning since Covid-19. The empirical sample comprises 27 semi-structured interviews with nurses working full-time in public hospitals in the context of the developing economy of Egypt. Thematic analysis was subsequently used to determine the main ideas in the transcripts. The findings include the following three categories of factors: individual (discretionary power, ensuring care to large numbers of patients), contextual (absence of stakeholder pressure, poor funding and resources, lack of communication) and job-related factors (long working hours and demanding duties, low status of nurses) that determine the engagement of nurses in organizational learning. This paper contributes to the literature in public administration, human resources management, organizational learning and healthcare management as a pioneering study specifically addressing organizational learning among nurses before and after Covid-19 in a developing country (Egypt).

PLAIN LANGUAGE SUMMARY

This paper contributes to the global dialogue on learning for healthcare professionals post Covid-19. The present paper is part of a broader project exploring current challenges and meaningfulness, and future prospects for the nursing profession in non-Western countries post Covid-19. In the present paper, the author has identified the main determinants of engagement in organizational learning among nurses despite their extreme jobs. Having done that, this paper contributes to public administration, human resources management, organizational learning and healthcare management through addressing the importance of learning for nurses in public hospitals. Moreover, the current paper is one of few academic studies to use Florence Nightingale theory and street-level bureaucracy to understand the dynamics of organizational learning in a non-Western context.

Keywords:

• Organizational learning
• extreme jobs
• nurses
• street-level bureaucracy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).