“Management accounting practices, mental states and performance: how do role clarity and self-efficacy mediate the relationship between budgetary participation and managerial performance?”

The health policy in many countries maintained the emergence of hybrid professionals and their job is gaining pivotal importance, little theoretical and empirical attention has been paid on how organizational practices can support medical managers their performance by shaping their beliefs about and investment in managerial tasks. The aim of the current study was to test a research model that considers previously unexplored mechanisms through which medical managers’ involvement in budgeting influence their budgetary performance. Building on Social cognitive theory, we focused on the mediating job of psychological variables associated with the managerial role of medical managers, namely managerial self-efficacy and managerial job engagement, in the participation-performance link. To this end, we used data collected from clinical managers working in a large Italian public hospital. The results suggest that budgetary participation does not exert a direct effect on performance; rather, managerial job engagement and managerial self-efficacy mediate the link between budgetary participation and performance. In addition, for the first time in managerial accounting research, the findings provide relevant insights on the relation between the involvement in budgeting and managerial job engagement as well as the link of this latter with managerial self-efficacy.