Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life: testing fundamental assumptions about calling, effort and enjoyment

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas, Shoshana R. Dobrow and Heather Barry Kappes

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: We test the fundamental assumptions that people experiencing a stronger sense of calling invest more effort in their work tasks, and find those tasks more enjoyable, than people with a weaker sense of calling. Both assumptions have been expressed theoretically, yet received limited empirical support. Among 2,839 workers in a crowdsourced marketplace, we found that people with a stronger calling toward their work completed more of a relatively unengaging work task and enjoyed the task more than those with a weaker calling. The calling-effort relationship was particularly strong when there was no financial incentive for effort (i.e., paid a fixed amount), highlighting the risk of exploitation for strong-calling employees. People with stronger callings nonetheless responded to financial incentives—they completed more work when offered additional pay to do so. The relationship between calling and enjoyment of the task was particularly strong when there was a financial incentive for effort (i.e., paid piece-rate), indicating that extrinsic rewards did not “crowd out” intrinsic rewards. Our findings are thus consistent with research about the presence of multiple motives for behavior. Our empirical support for these assumptions using more appropriate, rigorous methods paves the way to further develop novel calling theory.

JEL-codes: J01 J50 R14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2024-04-03
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in Journal of Management Scientific Reports, 3, April, 2024, 2(1), pp. 100 - 130. ISSN: 2755-0311

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/122061/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:122061

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().