Beyond competence: Nursing leadership as an ethical expression of professional identity
TL;DR
The central argument proposed here is that nursing leadership cannot be adequately understood as a technical or organizational competence and must be reclaimed as an ethical expression of professional identity, emerging from the internalization of professional values and deontological principles.
Abstract
Nursing leadership has become an almost unquestioned imperative in contemporary discourse on healthcare systems. It is invoked in policy documents, educational frameworks, and organizational strategies as a key competence for managing complexity, improving outcomes, and ensuring the sustainability of care systems. However, despite this broad legitimization, the concept of leadership in nursing is often treated in predominantly functional terms. It is frequently approached as a neutral and intrinsically positive construct, increasingly articulated in relation to skills, organizational influence, and professional functions. 1 When leadership is reduced to a set of competencies or managerial capacities, it risks losing its moral foundation. In this way, it becomes detached from the very foundations of nursing practice, which is intrinsically ethical, relational, and value-oriented. The central argument proposed here is that nursing leadership cannot be adequately understood as a technical or organizational competence. Rather, it must be reclaimed as an ethical expression of professional identity, emerging from the internalization of professional values and deontological principles. The dominant discourse on nursing leadership reflects a strong orientation toward functionality and performance. Transformational leadership, for example, is widely associated with improved organizational outcomes, greater staff satisfaction, and enhanced team performance, and is often presented as a desirable and teachable style. 2 Similarly, evidence-based leadership emphasizes the integration of the best available evidence into decision-making processes, aligning leadership with the goals of quality and patient safety. 3 Authentic leadership, in turn, introduces attention to the moral and relational dimensions, underscoring the importance of coherence between values and actions. 4 Although these models offer relevant contributions, they share a common limitation. When critically examined, these models risk reducing leadership to a set of developable and measurable competencies, neglecting the identity-related and ethical dimensions that sustain professional practice. In this way, they risk fragmenting the phenomenon,