Anti-Social Behavior in Profit and Nonprofit Organizations
65 Pages Posted: 28 Sep 2012
Date Written: March 2012
Abstract
Two types of intrinsically motivated workers are considered: "good" workers care about the mission of an organization, whereas "bad" workers derive pleasure from destructive behavior. While mission-oriented organizations take advantage of the intrinsic motivation of good workers, they are more vulnerable than profit-oriented organizations to anti-social behavior: bad workers only join them to behave badly. To prevent this, monitoring has to go up in the mission-oriented sector, while the incentives for good behavior stay the same. In the profit-oriented sector, by contrast, both monitoring and bonus payments for good behavior increase to control the damage caused by bad workers. As a result, in equilibrium bad workers are generally working in the for-profit sector where they behave like "normal" people, while good workers self select into the mission-oriented sector.
Keywords: candidate selection, motivated agents, non-profit, sabotage
JEL Classification: D21, D23, L31
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation