cover_nonprofit-and-voluntary-sector-quarterly.jpg

Mission, Motivation, and the Active Decision to Work for a Social Cause

The mission of a job affects the type of worker attracted to an organization but may also provide incentives to an existing workforce. We conducted a natural field experiment with 246 short-term workers. We randomly allocated some of these workers to either a prosocial or a commercial job. Our data suggest that the mission of a job has a performance-enhancing motivational impact on particular individuals only, those with a prosocial attitude. However, the mission is very important if it has been actively selected. Those workers who have chosen to contribute to a social cause outperform the ones randomly assigned to the same job by about half a standard deviation. This effect seems to be a universal phenomenon that is not driven by information about the alternative job, the choice itself, or a particular subgroup.

01. April 2022

Autoren Sabrina Jeworrek Vanessa Mertins

Ihr Kontakt

Für Wissenschaftler/innen

Für Journalistinnen/en

Mitglied der Leibniz-Gemeinschaft LogoTotal-Equality-LogoGefördert durch das BMWK