The Persistence of Prosocial Work Effort as a Function of Mission Match

Abstract

The authors use an online experiment to test the proposal that “mission match” leads to persistent prosocial work effort, whereby employees go above and beyond remunerated job responsibilities to deliver a public good. First, the importance of mission match to persistent prosocial work effort in public and nonprofit organizations is discussed. Then a real‐effort experiment is used to test whether mission match is associated with the persistence of individual work effort under conditions of unreasonable performance expectations. Findings show that subjects’ narrow identification with the mission of the particular organization on whose behalf they are working is a more important determinant of persistence than the extent to which one reports self‐sacrifice as a motivation toward service. Moreover, reported self‐sacrifice does not appear to reinforce the relationship between mission match and persistent prosocial work behavior.

Organizational Citizenship Behavior in the Public Sector: A Systematic Literature Review and Future Research Agenda

“…This research has led to notions of how to enhance employee motivation in ways that have emerged and been developed in public sector settings. For example, attention has been given to individual‐level concepts such as PSM (e.g., Mostafa, Gould‐Williams, and Bottomley ; Pandey, Wright, and Moynihan ) and mission matching (Resh, Marvel, and Wen ).…”

Public Sector Governance Reform and the Motivation of Street‐Level Bureaucrats in Developing Countries

“…Furthermore, this finding also highlights the ways in which NGOs, which often include mission match as part of their recruitment and hiring decisions, may be better placed to have more highly motivated staff (Carpenter and Gong ; Resh and Marvel ; Resh, Marvel, and Wen ), particularly in a developing country context in which public sector organizations can be viewed skeptically on account of low capacity, clientelism, or outright corruption. This is in line with attraction and selection mechanisms, and it is consistent with the notion that mission‐driven organizational contexts could help offset some of the potential negative consequences of performance incentives, though additional qualitative data are needed to shed light on the principal organizational dynamics underlying the relationships observed here (Kjeldsen and Jacobsen ; Langbein ; Moynihan ; Sanabria‐Pulido ).…”

Municipal Employees’ Performance and Neglect: The Effects of Mission Valence

“…Mission valence is high when the mission is perceived as challenging and valuable by the individual. Mission valence differs from close but distinct concepts like mission matching, which defines the congruence between personal values and organizational values; or mission salience, which defines a mission reflecting personal preferences and interests (Besley & Ghatak, 2005; Resh et al, 2018; Smith, 2016). What best characterizes mission valence and makes this concept unique is that the individual sees the organizational mission, along with organizational goals and values, as valuable.…”