A strong nursing leadership that instills trust in the leader and in the organization is an important component for an effective leadership, particularly for health care organizations, because trust defines the heart of health care workplaces by promoting patient safety, excellence in care, recruitment, and retention of the nursing staff. This study aimed to test the impact of perceived empowerment leadership style expressed by the nurse supervisor, nurses' perceived organizational support, trust in the leader, and trust in the organization on nurses' job burnout. A group of 273 nurses from an Italian public general hospital took part in a cross-sectional study on a voluntary basis by filling out an anonymous questionnaire. Empowering leadership was an important predictor of trust in the leader. Trust in the organization was influenced by perceived organizational support and by the Informing dimension of the empowering leadership style. Trust in the leader and trust in the organization showed a negative impact on job burnout and also mediated the effects of some empowering leadership dimensions and perceived organizational support on job burnout. The central role of trust in health care organizations was corroborated, as well as the beneficial effects of adopting specific features of empowerment leadership behaviors toward the nursing staff. Empowering leadership could be successfully proposed in training programs directed to nurses' supervisors and health care managers.

This paper tests and confirms the cross-cultural equivalence of the Servant Leadership Survey (SLS) in eight countries and languages: The Netherlands, Portugal, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Spain, Turkey and Finland. A composite sample consisting of 5201 respondents from eight countries that all filled out the SLS was used. A three-step approach was adopted to test configural invariance, measurement equivalence, and structural equivalence. For the full 30-item version of the SLS, configural invariance and partial measurement equivalence were confirmed. Implications of these results for the use of the SLS within cross-cultural studies are discussed.

This paper aimed to investigate three issues. First, the validation of the multi-dimensional Servant Leadership Survey (SLS) within the Italian context. Second, to enhance insight into the degree of servant leadership behaviour displayed by Italian leaders in organizational settings. Third, to support the fact that in Italy, too, servant leadership is positively correlated to leadership integrity, organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behaviour while it is negatively correlated to cynicism towards one’s own work. A sample of about 800 adults, males and females, currently employed in profit and non-profit organizations, took part in the study. The factorial structure of SLS found support, and the survey showed satisfactory psychometric properties and reliability. Servant leadership expressed by Italian leaders turned out to be lower than in The Netherlands and in the UK. SLS scores were positively associated with leadership integrity, organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behaviour, and negatively associated for cynicism.