Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/197004 
Year of Publication: 
2019
Series/Report no.: 
IWH Discussion Papers No. 10/2019
Publisher: 
Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung Halle (IWH), Halle (Saale)
Abstract: 
The mission of a job does not only affect the type of worker attracted to an organisation, but may also provide incentives to an existing workforce. We conducted a natural field experiment with 267 short-time workers and randomly allocated them to either a prosocial or a commercial job. Our data suggest that the mission of a job itself has a performance enhancing motivational impact on particular individuals only, i.e., workers 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 15 percent. This effect seems to be a universal phenomenon which is not driven by information about the alternative job, the choice itself or a particular subgroup.
Subjects: 
active decision
cognitive dissonance theory
field experiment
mission
performance
prosocial work
JEL: 
C93
D64
J33
M52
M55
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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