Do agents care for the mission of their job? A field experiment

Vanessa Mertins and Sabrina Jeworrek

VfS Annual Conference 2015 (Muenster): Economic Development - Theory and Policy from Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association

Abstract: Economic theory suggests that agents care for the outcomes they produce. This paper studies the conditions under which a pro-social mission of a job affects workers motivation to perform well. In particular, we investigate whether it makes a difference if workers actively decide upon doing a mission-oriented job or are exogenously assigned. We find that a pro-social mission itself affects only a small group of workers in a positive way whereas self-selection into a mission-oriented job leads to a highly significant overall performance boost.

JEL-codes: C93 J33 M55 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-hrm
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:vfsc15:112930

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