Nursing leadership in the US 1950s-1970s: a discourse analysis

This paper proposes that the development of nursing leadership and the struggle for professionalisation from the time of the early nineteenth century to the late twentieth century may be conceived as a series of products of constituent discourses. However, particular attention is focused on the concept of leadership as it pertains to the nursing profession in the US between the 1950s-1970s. This time-frame is an important period in the discursive formation of the idea of leadership and professionalisation as the US literature on these subjects in the areas of sociology, psychology, education and business administration exercised a strong influence on the microsocial world of professional nursing practice in the US and, indeed elsewhere, for example, Australia and the UK. The sociological complexity of the concept of leadership ultimately meant that it came to be regarded as a dynamic process pervading the existence of all people; their interrelationships, their morale, their confidence and their capacity to achieve. These features are reflected through the perceptions, beliefs and experiences of the American nursing profession as its constituent discourse appeared during the 1950s-1970s. Thus the paper is a discourse analysis on leadership in nursing with particular attention given to the bureaucratic authority of the hospital, the drive for the creation of a profession and the idea of leadership itself.