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.
AntonakisJ.d’AddaG.WeberR.ZehnderC. (2019). “Just words? Just speeches?” On the economic value of charismatic leadership [Working Paper]. Université de Lausanne.
2.
BanuriS.KeeferP.de WalqueD. (2018). Love the job. . . or the patient? Task vs. mission-based motivations in health care (World Bank Group Policy Research Working Paper 8338). World Bank.
3.
BelléN. (2013). Experimental evidence on the relationship between public service motivation and job performance. Public Administration Review, 731(1), 143–153.
4.
BorzagaC.TortiaE. (2006). Worker motivations, job satisfaction, and loyalty in public and nonprofit social services. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 35(2), 225–248.
5.
BrownW. A.YoshiokaC. F. (2003). Mission attachment and satisfaction as factors in employee retention. Nonprofit Management and Leadership, 14(1), 5–18.
6.
CarpenterJ.GongE. (2016). Motivating agents: How much does the mission matter?Journal of Labor Economics, 34(1), 211–236.
7.
CassarL. (2019). Job mission as a substitute for monetary incentives: Benefits and limits. Management Science, 65(2), 896–912.
8.
CerasoliC. P.NicklinJ. M.FordM. T. (2014). Intrinsic motivation and extrinsic incentives jointly predict performance: A 40-year meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 140(4), 980–1008.
9.
ChadiA.JeworrekS.MertinsV. (2017). When the meaning of work has disappeared: Experimental evidence on employees’ performance and emotions. Management Science, 63(6), 1696–1707.
10.
CharnessG.Cobo-ReyesR.SánchezA. (2016). The effect of charitable giving on workers’ performance: Experimental evidence. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, (Part A), 131, 61–74.
11.
ClaryE. G.SnyderM.StukasA. A. (1996). Volunteers’ motivations: Findings from a national survey. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 25(4), 485–505.
12.
De CoomanR.De GieterD.PepermansR.JegersM. (2011). A cross-sector comparison of motivation-related concepts in for-profit and not-for-profit service organizations. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 40(2), 296–317.
13.
FehrlerS.KosfeldM. (2014). Pro-social missions and worker motivation: An experimental study. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 100, 99–110.
14.
FestingerL. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford University Press.
15.
GerberA. S.GreenD. P. (2012). Field experiments: Design, analysis, and interpretation. W. W. Norton.
16.
GerhardsL. (2015). The incentive effects of missions—evidence from experiments with NGO employees and students. European Economic Review, 79, 252–262.
17.
GrantA. M. (2008). Does intrinsic motivation fuel the prosocial fire? Motivational synergy in predicting persistence, performance, and productivity. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(1), 48–58.
18.
GreggP.GroutP. A.RatcliffeA.SmithS.WindmeijerF. (2011). How important is pro-social behavior in the delivery of public services?Journal of Public Economics, 95(7-8), 758–766.
19.
HagenC.VogelC. (2012). Freiwilliges und generationenübergreifendes Engagement von Frauen und Männern—Analysepotenziale und Weiterentwicklung des Deutschen Freiwilligen-surveys. Informationsdienst Altersfrage, 39(3), 3–9.
20.
HandyF.KatzE. (1998). The wage differential between nonprofit institutions and corporations: Getting more by paying less?Journal of Comparative Economics, 26(2), 246–261.
21.
Harmon-JonesE.AmodioD. M.Harmon-JonesC. (2009). Action-based model of dissonance: A review, integration, and expansion of conceptions of cognitive conflict. In ZannaM. P. (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology(Vol. 41, pp. 119–166). Academic Press.
22.
HarrisonG. W.ListJ. A. (2004). Field experiments. Journal of Economic Literature, 42(4), 1009–1055.
23.
HeinzM.SchumacherH. (2017). Signaling cooperation. European Economic Review, 98, 199–216.
24.
IzumaK.MatsumotoM.MurayamaK.SamejimaK.SadatoN.MatsumotoK. (2010). Neural correlates of cognitive dissonance and choice-induced preference change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(51), 22014–22019.
25.
JensenU. T.MoynihanD. P.Houlberg SalomonsenH. (2018). Communicating the vision: How face-to-face dialogue facilitates transformational leadership. Public Administration Review, 78(3), 350–361.
26.
KajackaiteA.SliwkaD. (2017). Social responsibility and incentives in the lab: Why do agents exert more effort when principals donate?Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 142, 482–493.
27.
KingE. B.HeblM. R.Botsford MorganW.AhmadA. S. (2013). Field Experiments on Sensitive Organizational Topics. Organizational Research Methods, 16(4), 501–521.
28.
KnappJ. R.SmithB. R.SprinkleT. A. (2017). Is it the job or the support? Examining structural and relational predictors of job satisfaction and turnover intention for nonprofit employees. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 46(3), 652–671.
29.
KoppelH.RegnerT. (2014). Corporate social responsibility in the workplace. Experimental Economics, 17(3), 347–370.
30.
KosfeldM.NeckermannS.YangX. (2017). The effects of financial and recognition incentives across work contexts: The role of meaning. Economic Inquiry, 55(1), 237–247.
31.
KrupkaE.WeberR. A. (2009). The focusing and informational effects of norms on pro-social behavior. The Journal of Economic Psychology, 30(3), 307–320.
LockeE. A.LathamG. P. (1990). A theory of goal setting & task performance. Prentice-Hall.
34.
MasonD. P. (2013). Putting charity to the test: A case for field experiments on giving time and money in the nonprofit sector. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 42(1), 193–202.
35.
McDonaldR. E. (2007). An investigation of innovation in nonprofit organizations: The role of organizational mission. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 36(2), 256–281.
36.
MoseleyA.JamesO.JohnP.RichardsonL.RyanM.StokerG. (2018). The effects of social information on volunteering: A field experiment. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 47(3), 583–603.
37.
NichollsJ. G. (1984). Achievement motivation: Conceptions of ability, subjective car, task choice, and performance. Psychological Review, 913(3), 328–346.
38.
NonA.RohdeI.de GripA.DohmenT. (2019). Mission of the company, prosocial attitudes and job preferences: A discrete choice experiment (ROA Research Memorandum 2019/6). Maastricht University, Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market.
39.
PettigrewT. F.TroppL. R. (2006). A meta-analytic test of intergroup contact theory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90(5), 751–789.
40.
ReshW.MarvelJ.WenB. (2017). The persistence of prosocial work effort as a function of mission match. Public Administration Review, 78(1), 116–125.
41.
RidderH.-G.McCandlessA. (2010). Influences on the architecture of human resource management in nonprofit organization. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 39(1), 124–141.
42.
SmithJ. (2016). The motivational effects of mission matching: A lab-experimental test of a moderated mediation model. Public Administration Review, 76(4), 626–637.
43.
StutzerA.GoetteL.ZehnderM. (2011). Active decisions and prosocial behaviour: A field experiment on blood donation. The Economic Journal, 121(556), 476–493.
44.
ToninM.VlassopoulosM. (2010). Disentangling the sources of pro-socially motivated effort: A field experiment. Journal of Public Economics, 94(11), 1086–1092.
45.
ToninM.VlassopoulosM. (2015). Corporate philanthropy and productivity: Evidence from an online real effort experiment. Management Science, 61(8), 1795–1811.
46.
WeisbrodB. A. (1998). The nonprofit economy. Harvard University Press.
47.
WeissJ. A.PideritS. K. (1999). The value of mission statements in public agencies. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 9(2), 193–224.
48.
WinterV.ThalerJ. (2016). Does motivation matter for employer choices? A discrete-choice analysis of medical students’ decision among public, nonprofit, and for-profit hospitals. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 45(4), 762–786.
49.
WrightB. E. (2007). Public service and motivation: Does mission matter?Public Administration Review, 67(1), 54–64.
