The association between task interdependence and participation in decision-making: a moderated mediation model in mental healthcare

Participation in decision-making is crucial to healthcare workers collaborating across professions. Important correlates of participation in decision-making include task interdependence, informational role self-efficacy, and beliefs in the benefits of interprofessional collaboration. We hypothesised that although task interdependence is directly related to participation in decision-making, the relationship is mediated by informational role self-efficacy. Beliefs in the benefits in interprofessional collaboration act as a mediator. A sample of 315 mental healthcare workers answered validated questionnaires. Conditional processing was used to test the moderated mediation. Generally, the results confirmed our hypotheses. There was a direct relationship between task interdependence and participation in decision-making and it was mediated by informational role self-efficacy, and both relationships depend on whether healthcare workers believe in the benefits of interprofessional collaboration. However, although the moderation effect of beliefs in the benefits of interprofessional collaboration between task interdependence and informational role self-efficacy was positive, the moderation effect was negative for the relationship between task interdependence and participation in decision-making. Although there is an inherent logic in the positive relationships that were found, the negative moderation might be explained by the contrast between the structural view and the volitional view of task interdependence.