Relational Job Design and the Motivation to Make a Difference

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Relational Job Design and the Motivation to
Make a Difference
Adam M. Grant amgrant_at_umich.edu Doctoral
Student, Organizational Psychology University of
Michigan
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Acknowledgements of Impact

• 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/MO faculty/students
• QLIF, May Meaning Meeting

• 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

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Overview

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

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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

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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)

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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)

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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
  peoples lives?
• Look to the work itself tasks and jobs

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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

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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
• Whats missing from task significance
• How job structures shape opportunities for impact
  on others
• How jobs shape connections with these others

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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 QA session, led by manager, with
  student beneficiary (5 minutes)

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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

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Weekly Minutes on Phone
Intervention
Control
Cross-sectional analyses 2 weeks before no
differences One month after Intervention gt t
(18.98) 2.44, p .03
Longitudinal analyses Control no
differences Intervention increased, t (15)
4.64, p lt .001
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Weekly Pledges
Intervention
Control
Cross-sectional analyses 2 weeks before no
differences One month after Intervention gt t
(39) 2.13, p .04
Longitudinal analyses Control no
differences Intervention increased, t (15)
2.26, p .04
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Weekly Donation Amount
Intervention
Cross-sectional analyses 2 weeks before no
differences One month after Intervention gt t
(23.62) 3.45, p .002
Longitudinal analyses Control no
differences Intervention increased, t (15)
3.45, p .004
Control
2 weeks before intervention
One month after intervention
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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

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Conclusion

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