IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/wpaper/hal-05172121.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Workers’ Motivation and Quality of Services in Mission-Driven Sectors

Author

Listed:
  • Francesca Barigozzi

    (UNIBO - Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna = University of Bologna)

  • Chiara Canta

    (TBS - Toulouse Business School)

  • Helmuth Cremer

    (TSE-R - Toulouse School of Economics - UT Capitole - Université Toulouse Capitole - Comue de Toulouse - Communauté d'universités et établissements de Toulouse - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement)

Abstract

This paper studies how firms' ownership choices and workers' intrinsic motivation jointly shape service quality and market outcomes in labor-intensive, mission-driven sectors. Two organizations first choose whether to operate as standard for-profit or as mission-oriented firms, and then compete in both the labor and the user markets. Mission-oriented firms have higher unit costs but attract better-motivated workers. Service quality is endogenously determined through the sorting of intrinsically motivated workers and depends on the firm's ownership type. We show that all market structures—standard, mission-oriented, or mixed— can arise in equilibrium, and that mixed structures can be Pareto superior by efficiently allocating the most motivated workers to the mission-oriented firm while preserving the cost advantage of the other firm. While equilibrium outcomes generally diverge from the social optimum due to externalities and lack of coordination, they are both driven by the trade-off between cost-efficiency and motivation. The model helps explain the coexistence of heterogeneous ownership structures observed in some sectors—such as the nursing homes sector—andidentifies conditions under which such diversity is welfare-enhancing.

Suggested Citation

  • Francesca Barigozzi & Chiara Canta & Helmuth Cremer, 2025. "Workers’ Motivation and Quality of Services in Mission-Driven Sectors," Working Papers hal-05172121, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-05172121
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-05172121v1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://hal.science/hal-05172121v1/document
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David P. Baron, 2001. "Private Politics, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Integrated Strategy," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 10(1), pages 7-45, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Ernesto Dal Bó & Pedro Dal Bó & Rafael Di Tella, 2007. "Reputation When Threats and Transfers Are Available," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 16(3), pages 577-598, September.
    2. Aseem Kaul & Jiao Luo, 2018. "An economic case for CSR: The comparative efficiency of for‐profit firms in meeting consumer demand for social goods," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(6), pages 1650-1677, June.
    3. Lamar Pierce & Jason Snyder, 2015. "Unethical Demand and Employee Turnover," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 131(4), pages 853-869, November.
    4. Heyes, Anthony & Lyon, Thomas P. & Martin, Steve, 2018. "Salience games: Private politics when public attention is limited," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 396-410.
    5. Meyer, Margit & Waßmann, Jan, 2011. "Strategische Corporate Social Responsibility. Konzeptionelle Entwicklung und Implementierung in der Praxis am Beispiel 'dm-drogerie markt'," Research Papers on Marketing Strategy 3/2011, Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg, Lehrstuhl für BWL und Marketing.
    6. Becchetti, Leonardo & Palestini, Arsen & Solferino, Nazaria & Elisabetta Tessitore, M., 2014. "The socially responsible choice in a duopolistic market: A dynamic model of “ethical product” differentiation," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 114-123.
    7. Kladakis, George & Chen, Lei & Bellos, Sotirios K., 2023. "Ethical bank disclosures and liquidity creation," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    8. Werner Hediger, 2013. "From Multifunctionality and Sustainability of Agriculture to the Social Responsibility of the Agri-food System," Journal of Socio-Economics in Agriculture (Until 2015: Yearbook of Socioeconomics in Agriculture), Swiss Society for Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology, vol. 6(1), pages 59-80.
    9. Fanti, Luciano & Buccella, Domenico, 2018. "A note on the social responsibility in a bilateral monopoly," MPRA Paper 88162, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Jill Brown & William Forster, 2013. "CSR and Stakeholder Theory: A Tale of Adam Smith," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 112(2), pages 301-312, January.
    11. Thomas P. Lyon & John W. Maxwell, 2004. "Astroturf: Interest Group Lobbying and Corporate Strategy," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 13(4), pages 561-597, December.
    12. Atonu Rabbani, "undated". "Can Leaders Promote Better Health Behavior? Learning from a Sanitation and Hygiene Communication Experiment in Rural Bangladesh," Working papers 118, The South Asian Network for Development and Environmental Economics.
    13. Allard Made, 2014. "Information Provision by Interest Groups," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 58(4), pages 649-664, August.
    14. Lei Wang & Heikki Juslin, 2011. "The effects of value on the perception of corporate social responsibility implementation: A study of Chinese youth," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 18(4), pages 246-262, July.
    15. Hege, Ulrich & Li, Kai & Zhang, Yifei, 2025. "Climate Innovation and Carbon Emissions: Evidence from Supply Chain Networks," TSE Working Papers 25-1608, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    16. Constantine Manasakis & Evangelos Mitrokostas & Emmanuel Petrakis, 2015. "Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility by Multinational Enterprises," Working Papers 1501, University of Crete, Department of Economics.
    17. Friedrichsen, Jana, 2013. "Image concerns and the provision of quality," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Market Behavior SP II 2013-211, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    18. Robert Innes & Abdoul G. Sam, 2008. "Voluntary Pollution Reductions and the Enforcement of Environmental Law: An Empirical Study of the 33/50 Program," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 51(2), pages 271-296, May.
    19. Lammertjan Dam & Bert Scholtens & Elmer Sterken, 2007. "Corporate Governance and International Location Decisions of Multinational Enterprises," Corporate Governance: An International Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(6), pages 1330-1347, November.
    20. Giglio, Stefano & Maggiori, Matteo & Stroebel, Johannes & Tan, Zhenhao & Utkus, Stephen & Xu, Xiao, 2025. "Four facts about ESG beliefs and investor portfolios," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 164(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • J21 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure
    • L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets
    • L31 - Industrial Organization - - Nonprofit Organizations and Public Enterprise - - - Nonprofit Institutions; NGOs; Social Entrepreneurship

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:hal:wpaper:hal-05172121. 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: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.