Ethical climate and service behaviours in nurses: The moderating role of employment type

To explore the relationship between ethical climate (EC) and nurses' service behaviours (SB) and examine the moderating effect of nurses' employment type.

As most public hospitals in China implement the "dual-track system" of nurses' employment, the two different types of nurses, contract-employed nurses and state-employed nurses, receive the different pay for the same work, which results in they providing different SB. It has become critical for hospital administrators and nursing managers to understand better the state of two groups of nurses and to find an effective method to improve the service level of the nursing workforce.

Stepwise multiple regression analyses of survey data collected in June and July 2017 from Chinese nurses employed in three tertiary hospitals.

Chinese nurses (298 of 350 [85.1%]) were interviewed using the Ethical Climate Scale and Nurses' Service Behaviour Scale. Data were analysed statistically using descriptive statistics, confirmatory factor analysis, correlation coefficients (Pearson), two-tailed t-test and stepwise multiple regression analyses were conducted to test the proposed hypotheses. Data were analysed using SPSS and AMOS.

There were statistically significant correlations between EC and nurses' extra-role service behaviour (ERSB) and overall service behaviour and nurses' employment type moderated the proposed relationships.

Healthcare institutions should pay more attention to cultivate EC and implement new incentive mechanism to better stimulate nurses to provide ERSB.