Love the Job... or the Patient? : Task vs. Mission-Based Motivations in Health Care
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 motivatio...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2018
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/198581518535720915/Love-the-job-or-the-patient-task-vs-mission-based-motivations-in-health-care http://hdl.handle.net/10986/29372 |
| Summary: | 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. |
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