This article uses the General Social Survey (GSS) to compare the effects of “social” work rewards on job satisfaction and turnover intent for nonprofit, public, and for-profit workers. Drawing on properties of the nonprofit sector, we hypothesize that social rewards should be more prevalent in nonprofit workplaces and have a larger impact on job decisions for nonprofit than for government and for-profit workers. Consistent with this, we find that social rewards are perceived as more prevalent in nonprofit organizations. In addition, having helpful coworkers and having a supervisor who cares about one’s welfare have larger effects on job satisfaction for nonprofit workers than for workers in the other two sectors, and having a helpful supervisor discourages turnover intent to a larger extent in the nonprofit sector than in the for-profit and public sectors. Overall, however, we find that differences in the magnitude of impact of social rewards by sector are less pronounced than theory would suggest.
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