Involving hybrid professionals in top management decision-making: how managerial training can make the difference

Hybrid professionals have a two-fold - professional and managerial - role, which requires appropriate management skills. Investing on managerial training programs aims to empower professionals with managerial skills and competencies. Does this pay back? Assessing the impact of such training programs is still a limited practice. This paper explores whether participation in managerial training programs in healthcare can enhance the involvement of hybrid professionals (namely, clinical directors) in top management decision-making. The mediational effects of knowledge of performance information and its use are explored. Survey data were collected from more than 3,000 clinical directors of 69 public health authorities from five regional healthcare systems in Italy. Relationships between participation in managerial training programs, performance management practices (i.e., knowledge and use of performance information) and the level of clinicians’ involvement by the top management were studied using a three-path mediation analysis with structural equation modelling. Propensity score matching was also performed to mitigate selection bias. Knowledge and use of performance information positively mediate, both independently and sequentially, the relationship between head of departments’ participation in managerial training programs and the level of clinical directors’ involvement in decision-making. The results of the study suggest that managerial training can support hybrid professionals in engaging with managerialism and playing upward influence on top management decision-making.