Mission, Motivation, and the Active Decision to Work for a Social Cause

The mission of a job affects the type worker attracted to an organization but may also provide incentives existing workforce. We conducted natural field experiment with 246 short-term workers. randomly allocated some these workers either prosocial or commercial job. Our data suggest that has performance-enhancing motivational impact on particular individuals only, those attitude. However, is very important if it been actively selected. Those who have chosen contribute social cause outperform ones assigned same by about half standard deviation. This effect seems be universal phenomenon not driven information alternative job, choice itself, subgroup.