Pro-social missions and worker motivation: An experimental study

Arbeitspapier

Do employees work harder if their job has the right mission? In a laboratory labor market experiment, we test whether subjects provide higher effort if they can choose the mission of their job. We observe that subjects do not provide higher effort than in a control treatment. Surprised by this finding, we run a second experiment in which subjects can choose whether they want to work on a job with their preferred mission or not. A subgroup of agents (roughly one third) is willing to do so even if this option is more costly than choosing the alternative job. Moreover, we find that these subjects provide substantially higher effort. These results suggest that relatively few workers can be motivated by missions and that selection into mission-oriented organizations is important to explain empirical findings of lower wages and high motivation in the latter.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 6460

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Design of Experiments: Laboratory, Group Behavior ; Compensation Packages; Payment Methods ; Personnel Economics: Compensation and Compensation Methods and Their Effects
• Subject: motivation ; effort provision ; contract choice ; sorting ; lab experiment ; Leistungsmotivation ; Arbeitsleistung ; Soziales Verhalten ; Betriebswirtschaftliches Ziel ; Test

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Fehrler, Sebastian ; Kosfeld, Michael
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
• (where): Bonn
• (when): 2012

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/58548
• URN: urn:nbn:de:101:1-201208065420
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET