Why Performance Targets are Recognized as “Dead Letters”: An Empirical Study on Nursing Professionals

The purpose of this study is to identify the reasons why healthcare professionals neglect to reach their cost performance goals. It has been pointed out that healthcare professionals often ignore goals (e.g., cost targets), despite the clear need for effective performance management, especially in healthcare organizations.To identify the factors behind this behavior, this study applies social and psychological perspectives to conduct a survey of 150 nurses belonging to a hospital.In accordance with Baron and Kenny(1986)’s mediation analysis, the result shows that nurses’ perceptions of occupational professionalism, especially occupational perception toward their expertise, have a significantly negative effect. Second, unlike the results of previous studies, the effect of the degree of autonomy,which is one of the important factors, is found to be limited. The result indicates that the perception of one’s career consciousness itself has a significantly negative effect.This study suggests that giving positive cognitions of having acceptable discretion to nursing and other healthcare professionals is one of the necessary conditions for the effective functioning of cost management systems.