The Impact of Acculturation on the Leadership Style of Afghan American Registered Nurses Working in the United States’ Healthcare System

Abstract

The impact of acculturation on leadership style is an important topic for the global community, especially during stressful years of the Covid-19 pandemic. A quantitative, non-experimental, descriptive-correlational design using primary retrospective data was employed in this study. We used established instruments such as the Acculturation Rating Scale Questionnaire and the Leadership Style Questionnaire (LSQ) with 172 working adult respondents in the U.S. Health System as registered nurses. The results showed that Afghan male and female nurses tended to identify with the Afghan culture or the American culture, not both. Afghan male nurses’ relationship-oriented leadership was related to both Afghan and (more weakly) American acculturation (the more acculturation, the more relationship orientation).