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A booming literature has argued that mission-based motives are a central feature of mission-oriented labor markets. This paper shifts the focus to task-based motivation and finds that it yields significantly more effort than mission-based motivation. Moreover, in the presence of significant task motivation, mission motivation has no additional effect on effort. The evidence emerges from experiments with nearly 250 medical and nursing students in Burkina Faso. The students exert effort in three tasks, from boring to interesting. In addition, for half of the students, mission motivation is present: their effort on the task generates benefits for a charity. Two strong results emerge. First, task motivation has an economically important effect on effort, more than doubling effort. Second, mission motivation increases effort, but only for mundane tasks and not when the task is interesting. Moreover, even for mundane tasks, the effects of mission motivation appear to be less than those of task motivation.

Civil Service --- Extrinsic Motivation --- Intrinsic Motivation --- Labor Policies --- Performance --- Public Sector Development --- Public Sector Reform --- Social Protections and Labor

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This paper examines the effects of pecuniary compensation on the ability and motivation of individuals in organizations with non-pecuniary or pro-social missions. In particular, the paper compares flat pay systems, unrelated with ability or effort, to two other systems that are considered superior: high-powered, pay for performance schemes and more traditional, "Weberian" schemes that calibrate pay to ability, independent of effort. The analysis uses a sample of future public sector workers and finds that all three pay schemes attract motivated workers into tasks with a pro-social mission. However, flat pay schemes also attract low ability workers. In the short run, pay-for-performance schemes generate higher effort than flat pay and pay-for-ability systems, a difference driven entirely by effects on unmotivated workers. Once selection effects are accounted for, however, workers with pay for ability and pay for performance exert statistically indistinguishable levels of effort in the pro-social task. Moreover, pay for ability elicits effort at lower cost than pay for performance.

Civil Service --- E-Business --- Education --- Education & Society --- Educational Sciences --- Extrinsic Motivation --- Industry --- Intrinsic Motivation --- Labor Policies --- Performance --- Private Sector Development --- Public Sector Reform --- Social Protections and Labor --- Technology Industry