Effective Managerial Factors in Empowerment of Health Networks Managers: A Cross-Sectional Study

Background and Objectives: Empowerment of managers and employees can be considered as one of the most important factors for making employees and organizations more efficient. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the effect of managerial factors and identifying its components and variables in empowering health networks managers.
Material and Methods: This applied, exploratory and cross-sectional study conducted among 430 managers of health networks of East Azerbaijan, West Azerbaijan and Ardabil provinces that were chosen by stratified random sampling method in 2018-2019. Data collected using a researcher-made questionnaire which its validity confirmed by experts and its reliability calculated using Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.96 Data analyzed by using descriptive statistics and exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis.
Results: Based on the standard coefficients of confirmatory factor analysis, the "guidance and participatory management" with a factor loading of 0.96 and "manager’s feeling of belonging to a group" with 0.87 factor loading were the two effective management components on empowering health network managers and the indicators of both managerial components were significant at p<0.001 level. The variables of "consulting", "information sharing", "ability development" and "participatory management" with factor loadings of 0.85, 0.76, 0.75 and 0.71, respectively, had the highest importance.
Conclusion: The approved model of empowerment managerial factors in this study can be used as a practical guide for health system policy-makers and managers to play an effective role in empowering their managers by improving the managerial factor in health networks and organizations and through the participatory management, information sharing, guidance and support, delegating authority and responsibility.