IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/ormnsc/v67y2021i2p1004-1025.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Demotivating Effects of Communicating a Social-Political Stance: Field Experimental Evidence from an Online Labor Market Platform

Author

Listed:
  • Vanessa C. Burbano

    (Columbia Business School, New York, New York 10027)

Abstract

Despite a recent surge in corporate activism, with firm leaders communicating about social-political issues unrelated to their core businesses, we know little about its strategic implications. This paper examines the effect of an employer communicating a stance about a social-political issue on employee motivation, using a two-phase, preregistered field experiment in an online labor market platform. Results demonstrate an asymmetric treatment effect of taking a stance depending on whether the employee agrees or disagrees with that stance. Namely, I observe a demotivating effect of taking a stance on a social-political issue with which employees disagree and no statistically significant motivating effect of taking a stance on a social-political issue with which employees agree. This study has important implications for the nascent scholarship on corporate activism, as well as the scholarship on strategic human capital management. This paper was accepted by Greta Hsu, organizations.

Suggested Citation

  • Vanessa C. Burbano, 2021. "The Demotivating Effects of Communicating a Social-Political Stance: Field Experimental Evidence from an Online Labor Market Platform," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(2), pages 1004-1025, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:67:y:2021:i:2:p:1004-1025
    DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2019.3562
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2019.3562
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/mnsc.2019.3562?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kahan, Dan M. & Peters, Ellen & Dawson, Erica Cantrell & Slovic, Paul, 2017. "Motivated numeracy and enlightened self-government," Behavioural Public Policy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 1(1), pages 54-86, May.
    2. Ola Andersson & Marieke Huysentruyt & Topi Miettinen & Ute Stephan, 2017. "Person–Organization Fit and Incentives: A Causal Test," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(1), pages 73-96, January.
    3. Cable, Daniel M. & Judge, Timothy A., 1996. "Person-Organization Fit, Job Choice Decisions, and Organizational Entry," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 67(3), pages 294-311, September.
    4. Tonin, Mirco & Vlassopoulos, Michael, 2010. "Disentangling the sources of pro-socially motivated effort: A field experiment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(11-12), pages 1086-1092, December.
    5. List, John A., 2009. "An introduction to field experiments in economics," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 70(3), pages 439-442, June.
    6. Mirco Tonin & Michael Vlassopoulos, 2015. "Corporate Philanthropy and Productivity: Evidence from an Online Real Effort Experiment," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(8), pages 1795-1811, August.
    7. Ashish Arora & Michelle Gittelman & Sarah Kaplan & John Lynch & Will Mitchell & Nicolaj Siggelkow & Aaron K. Chatterji & Michael Findley & Nathan M. Jensen & Stephan Meier & Daniel Nielson, 2016. "Field experiments in strategy research," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(1), pages 116-132, January.
    8. repec:feb:artefa:0089 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Greta Hsu & Michael T. Hannan, 2005. "Identities, Genres, and Organizational Forms," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 16(5), pages 474-490, October.
    10. Bonardi, Jean-Philippe & Holburn, Guy & Vanden Bergh, Rick, 2006. "Nonmarket performance: Evidence from U.S. electric utilities," MPRA Paper 14437, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Vanessa C. Burbano, 2016. "Social Responsibility Messages and Worker Wage Requirements: Field Experimental Evidence from Online Labor Marketplaces," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 27(4), pages 1010-1028, August.
    12. Sundararajan, Arun, 2016. "The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262034573, December.
    13. Gordon Burtch & Seth Carnahan & Brad N. Greenwood, 2018. "Can You Gig It? An Empirical Examination of the Gig Economy and Entrepreneurial Activity," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(12), pages 5497-5520, December.
    14. Jelena Spanjol & Leona Tam & Vivian Tam, 2015. "Employer–Employee Congruence in Environmental Values: An Exploration of Effects on Job Satisfaction and Creativity," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 130(1), pages 117-130, August.
    15. Z. Leviston & I. Walker & S. Morwinski, 2013. "Your opinion on climate change might not be as common as you think," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 3(4), pages 334-337, April.
    16. Christopher I. Rider & David Tan, 2015. "Labor Market Advantages of Organizational Status: A Study of Lateral Partner Hiring by Large U.S. Law Firms," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 26(2), pages 356-372, April.
    17. Lamar Pierce & Daniel C. Snow & Andrew McAfee, 2015. "Cleaning House: The Impact of Information Technology Monitoring on Employee Theft and Productivity," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(10), pages 2299-2319, October.
    18. Davide Cantoni & David Y. Yang & Noam Yuchtman & Y. Jane Zhang, 2017. "Are Protests Games of Strategic Complements or Substitutes? Experimental Evidence from Hong Kong's Democracy Movement," NBER Working Papers 23110, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Greta Hsu & Kimberly D. Elsbach, 2013. "Explaining Variation in Organizational Identity Categorization," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 24(4), pages 996-1013, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Aseem Kaul, 2021. "Putting the horse back before the cart: designing strategic social enterprises," Journal of Organization Design, Springer;Organizational Design Community, vol. 10(3), pages 103-108, December.
    2. Brownen-Trinh, Ruby & Orujov, Ayan, 2023. "Corporate socio-political activism and retail investors: Evidence from the Black Lives Matter campaign," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    3. Young Hou & Christopher W. Poliquin, 2023. "The effects of CEO activism: Partisan consumer behavior and its duration," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(3), pages 672-703, March.
    4. Aharon Mohliver & Donal Crilly & Aseem Kaul, 2023. "Corporate social counterpositioning: How attributes of social issues influence competitive response," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(5), pages 1199-1217, May.
    5. Constance E. Helfat & Aseem Kaul & David J. Ketchen & Jay B. Barney & Olivier Chatain & Harbir Singh, 2023. "Renewing the resource‐based view: New contexts, new concepts, and new methods," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(6), pages 1357-1390, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Non, Arjan & Rohde, Ingrid & de Grip, Andries & Dohmen, Thomas, 2022. "Mission of the company, prosocial attitudes and job preferences: A discrete choice experiment," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    2. Jeworrek, Sabrina & Mertins, Vanessa, 2019. "Mission, motivation, and the active decision to work for a social cause," IWH Discussion Papers 10/2019, Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH).
    3. Jasjit Singh & Nina Teng & Serguei Netessine, 2019. "Philanthropic Campaigns and Customer Behavior: Field Experiments on an Online Taxi Booking Platform," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(2), pages 913-932, February.
    4. Vanessa C. Burbano, 2016. "Social Responsibility Messages and Worker Wage Requirements: Field Experimental Evidence from Online Labor Marketplaces," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 27(4), pages 1010-1028, August.
    5. Colleen M. Boland & Corinna Ewelt-Knauer & Julia Schneider, 2022. "The gift that keeps on giving: corporate giving and excessive risk-taking," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 92(3), pages 355-396, April.
    6. Kesternich, Iris & Schumacher, Heiner & Siflinger, Bettina & Schwarz, Stefan, 2021. "Money or meaning? Labor supply responses to work meaning of employed and unemployed individuals," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).
    7. Matthew Amengual & Evan P. Apfelbaum, 2021. "True Motives: Prosocial and Instrumental Justifications for Behavioral Change in Organizations," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(8), pages 5032-5051, August.
    8. Vladasel, Theodor & Parker, Simon C. & Sloof, Randolph & van Praag, Mirjam C., 2022. "Revenue Drift, Incentives, and Effort Allocation in Social Enterprises," IZA Discussion Papers 15716, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    9. Vanessa, Mertins & Jeworrek, Sabrina & Vlassopoulos, Michael, 2018. ""The Good News about Bad News": Feedback about Past Organisational Failure Bad ist Impact in Worker Productivity," VfS Annual Conference 2018 (Freiburg, Breisgau): Digital Economy 181644, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    10. Timothy Gubler & Ian Larkin & Lamar Pierce, 2018. "Doing Well by Making Well: The Impact of Corporate Wellness Programs on Employee Productivity," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(11), pages 4967-4987, November.
    11. Möhlmann, Mareike, 2021. "Unjustified trust beliefs: Trust conflation on sharing economy platforms," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(3).
    12. Charness, Gary & Cobo-Reyes, Ramón & Sánchez, Ángela, 2016. "The effect of charitable giving on workers’ performance: Experimental evidence," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 131(PA), pages 61-74.
    13. Gosnell, Greer & Metcalfe, Robert & List, John A, 2016. "A new approach to an age-old problem: solving externalities by incenting workers directly," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 84331, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    14. De Chiara, Alessandro & Manna, Ester, 2022. "Firms' ownership, employees’ altruism, and product market competition," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 109(C).
    15. Yongwook Paik & Christos A. Makridis, 2023. "The social value of a ridesharing platform: a hedonic pricing approach," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 64(5), pages 2125-2150, May.
    16. Christoph Grimpe & Ulrich Kaiser & Wolfgang Sofka, 2019. "Signaling valuable human capital: Advocacy group work experience and its effect on employee pay in innovative firms," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(4), pages 685-710, April.
    17. Kampkötter, Patrick & Petters, Lea M. & Sliwka, Dirk, 2021. "Employee identification and wages – on the economics of “Affective Commitment”," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 188(C), pages 608-626.
    18. Xunyi Wang & Meiling Jiang & Wencui Han & Liangfei Qiu, 2022. "Do Emotions Sell? The Impact of Emotional Expressions on Sales in the Space‐Sharing Economy," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 31(1), pages 65-82, January.
    19. Daniel Jones & Mirco Tonin & Michael Vlassopoulos, 2018. "Paying for what kind of performance? Performance pay and multitasking in mission-oriented jobs," BEMPS - Bozen Economics & Management Paper Series BEMPS51, Faculty of Economics and Management at the Free University of Bozen.
    20. Au, Pak Hung & Li, King King & Zhang, Qing & Zhu, Rong, 2023. "The Hidden Costs of Choice in the Labor Market," IZA Discussion Papers 16623, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:67:y:2021:i:2:p:1004-1025. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.