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Relational Job Design and the Motivation to Make a Difference

Relational Job Design and the Motivation to Make a Difference. Adam M. Grant amgrant@umich.edu Doctoral Student, Organizational Psychology University of Michigan. Acknowledgements of Impact. Impact Lab students Amy Bass Charlotte Burns Beth Campbell Grace Chen Keenan Cottone

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Relational Job Design and the Motivation to Make a Difference

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  1. Relational Job Design and the Motivation to Make a Difference Adam M. Grant amgrant@umich.edu Doctoral Student, Organizational Psychology University of Michigan

  2. Acknowledgements of Impact Impact Lab students • Amy Bass • Charlotte Burns • Beth Campbell • Grace Chen • Keenan Cottone • Christy Flanagan • Molly Gannon • Alex Jaffe • Melissa Kamin • Claire Kemerling • Emily Kidston • David Lapedis • Karen Lee • Ginelle Nagel • Gina Valo • Sue Ashford • Jane Dutton • Richard Hackman • Fiona Lee • Brian Little • Joshua Margolis • Andy Molinsky • Lou Penner • Mike Pratt • Rick Price • Kathie Sutcliffe • Allison Sweet • Amy Wrzesniewski • Org psych/M&O faculty/students • QLIF, May Meaning Meeting

  3. Overview • The motivation to make a difference • How work contexts motivate people to care about making a difference • Field experiment evidence • Mechanisms and contributions

  4. The Motivation to Make a Difference • Popular Press • Bornstein, 2004; Everett, 1995; May, 2003; Quinn, 2000 • Organizational Missions • Collins & Porras, 1996; Thompson & Bunderson, 2003 • Diverse Organizational Literatures • E.g., Dutton & Ashford, 1993; Marx, 1980; Meyerson & Scully, 1995

  5. Recent Organizational Research • Individual differences perspective on the motivation to make a difference • People who see work as calling want to make the world a better place; those who see work as a job/career do not (Wrzesniewski et al., 1997) • Benevolent employees are altruistic; entitled employees are more selfish (Huseman et al., 1987) • Some employees are self-interested; others are prosocially oriented (Penner et al., 1997; Meglino & Korsgaard, 2004)

  6. Beyond Individual Differences • Interdisciplinary evidence: Virtually all people have the capacity to care about others • Genetic capacity for empathy (Batson, 1991; Eisenberg, 2000) • Sociocultural values: benevolence (Schwartz & Bardi, 2001) • Natural selection favors helping ingroup (Burnstein et al., 1994) • In social and economic dilemmas, people cooperate (Axelrod, 1984) and help at a cost to themselves (Rabin, 1998) • People have basic motives to connect with others (Baumeister & Leary, 1995)

  7. Work Contexts • Beyond “Which people care about others?” • To “When, and under what conditions, do people care about others? • Can work contexts motivate employees to care about making a positive difference in other people’s lives? • Look to the work itself– tasks and jobs

  8. Basic Units of Work • Task • Assigned piece of work • Job • Collection of tasks designed to be performed by one employee (Hackman & Oldham, 1976; Griffin, 1987) • Definition overlooks relational architecture of jobs • Jobs shape opportunities to interact and form connections with others

  9. Job Design • Task significance (Hackman & Oldham, 1976) • Degree to which work affects the welfare of other people • Clues that jobs spark motivation to make a difference • What’s missing from task significance • How job structures shape opportunities for impact on others • How jobs shape connections with these others

  10. Relational Job Design • Job impact on beneficiaries • Domains: psychological, physical, financial • Dimensions: magnitude, scope, frequency • Regulatory focus: promotion/prevention • Contact with beneficiaries • Dimensions: frequency, duration, physical proximity, emotional intensity, breadth • When jobs are well-designed with attention to their relational properties, employees care about making a difference

  11. Predictions • Jobs spark the motivation to make a difference when they provide opportunities for employees to have impact on, and build relationships with, beneficiaries • Job impact on beneficiaries  perceived impact on beneficiaries • Contact with beneficiaries  affective commitment to beneficiaries • Perceived impact on beneficiaries + affective commitment to beneficiaries = motivation to make a difference

  12. Field Intervention • Fundraising organization • University callers soliciting alumni donations • Donations provide student scholarships • Callers never meet scholarship students • Scholarship student agrees to meet with callers

  13. Intervention Design • 41 callers • 23 male, 18 female • Average tenure 9.17 months • Conditions stratified by tenure and gender • Control condition (n = 23) • Never meet student beneficiary

  14. Intervention Condition • Intervention condition (n = 17) • Callers have ten minutes of contact with the student beneficiary • Callers meet in “break room” in groups of 4-8 • Read a letter from student beneficiary (5 minutes) • Structured Q&A session, led by manager, with student beneficiary (5 minutes)

  15. Measures • Persistence behavior • Minutes on phone • Job performance • Number of pledges • Total donation amount • Baseline measures: 2 weeks before intervention • Dependent measures: 1 month after intervention

  16. 300 200 100 0 2 weeks before intervention One month after intervention Weekly Minutes on Phone Intervention Control Cross-sectional analyses 2 weeks before: no differences One month after: Intervention > t (18.98) = 2.44, p = .03 Longitudinal analyses Control: no differences Intervention: increased, t (15) = 4.64, p < .001

  17. 6.0 5.5 5.0 4.5 \ 4.0 3.5 3.0 2.5 2 weeks before intervention One month after intervention Weekly Pledges Intervention Control Cross-sectional analyses 2 weeks before: no differences One month after: Intervention > t (39) = 2.13, p = .04 Longitudinal analyses Control: no differences Intervention: increased, t (15) = 2.26, p = .04

  18. 600 500 400 300 200 100 Weekly Donation Amount Intervention Cross-sectional analyses 2 weeks before: no differences One month after: Intervention > t (23.62) = 3.45, p = .002 Longitudinal analyses Control: no differences Intervention: increased, t (15) = 3.45, p = .004 Control One month after intervention 2 weeks before intervention

  19. Lab Experiment • Editing task to examine mechanisms • Varied contact with beneficiaries and task impact on beneficiaries between subjects • Participants in the contact + high impact condition spent significantly more time on the task • Affective commitment to beneficiaries mediated the effect

  20. Conclusion • Contributions • Job design • Relationships as meaning and motivation • Self-interest • Your feedback on next steps?

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