Leadership in community pharmacies

A survey-based, cross-sectional study to investigate the (in)direct relationship between leadership behavior on Patient Reported Experience Measures (PREM), a parameter used for firm performance within Dutch community pharmacies was performed. Postulated was that this relationship could be mediated via job satisfaction of moderated by ownership type. This study shows that leadership behavior is indeed positively and significantly associated with job satisfaction among pharmacy technicians. The relationship between transactional leadership and job (Unst. Β 0,34 [0,08-0,33], P<0.001), the unstandardized coefficients were lower than the respective coefficients in the models for transformational leadership (Unst. Β 0,47 [0,35-0,58], P<0.001). Therefore, it seems that transformational leadership scores indeed have more impact on both job satisfaction. No significant association between leadership behavior and PREM (transformational: (Exp (B) 0,57 [0,27-1,16], P = 0,12); transactional (Exp (B) 1,15 [0,69-1,79], P = 0,65), nor a mediation effect of job satisfaction is found. Interestingly, results show that ownership type of the pharmacy does not seem to moderate the effect of leadership behavior on either PREM or job satisfaction, but is independently, positively associated with PREM. In light of these results, further research should focus on ownership as mediating variable for the relation between leader behaviors and additional parameters for PREM to measure firm performance.