رفتار حرفه ای و اجتماعی در ارائه خدمات عمومی تا چه حد مهم است؟

A number of papers have suggested that pro-social behaviour in the workplace may be sensitive to the institutional environment, but there is little empirical research that attempts to test this directly using data on worker behaviour. This is the aim of this paper. We show that individuals in the non-profit sector are significantly more likely to do unpaid overtime than those in the for-profit sector. However, we find no evidence of adjustment along either the extensive or intensive margins when individuals change sectors. The results of our analysis therefore point to selection and we find supporting evidence that individuals do self-select on the basis of their propensity to donate labour.

The themes of other-regarding preferences, intrinsic motivation, and pro-social behaviour have been ever-present in some form in economics, albeit often under different nomenclature (Smith, 1759, provides an early reference), but they have recently become the focus of mainstream economic research. In particular, there is now a large and growing body of theoretical research on intrinsic motivation and pro-social behaviour and their sensitivity to the institutional environment particularly for-profit and non-profit organisations.1 One line of this research suggests that selection and matching effects between individuals and organisations according to pro-social motivation or “mission” will be important (Besley and Ghatak, 2003, Besley and Ghatak, 2005, Delfgaauw and Dur, 2007, Dixit, 2002 and Francois, 2007). Another emphasises individual self esteem and signalling motives (e.g., Andreoni and Bernheim, 2009, Benabou and Tirole, 2006 and Ellingsen and Johannesson, 2008). A third focuses on the absence of the profit motive, suggesting that the non-profit form can prevent the diversion of the benefits of pro-social behaviour toward greater profit rather than higher quality, which may encourage greater trust and also impact on the incentive to engage in pro-social behaviour (e.g., Arrow, 1975, Francois, 2000, Francois, 2003, Glaeser and Shleifer, 2001, Hansmann, 1980 and Rose-Ackerman, 1996). A number of field and laboratory experiments have been used to explore how pro-social behaviour is affected by the institutional environment. Many of the findings are consistent with the idea that high powered incentives and the profit motive reduce pro-social behaviour although this is not unanimous (e.g., Ariely et al., 2009, Frey and Oberholzer-Gee, 1997, Fehr and List, 2004, Gneezy and Rustichini, 2000 and Mellstrom and Johannesson, 2008). However, while these experiments cover a broad variety of situations and have diverse approaches, there has to date been little analysis of the relationship between pro-social behaviour and institutional environment using data on individuals' behaviour in the workplace.2 The aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between institutional structure and pro-social behaviour using a measure of actual pro-social behaviour in the workplace — unpaid overtime or “donated labour”. We test whether employees in non-profit organisations behave more pro-socially than their equivalents in for-profit organisations, as suggested by a number of theories. We also try to shed light on the mechanism through which any such observed relationship comes about. As discussed above, one strand, e.g., Francois (2000), suggests that we should observe a relationship between non-profit and pro-social behaviour because the non-profit form enables and fosters pro-social behaviour in a way that for-profit cannot because it cannot commit ex ante not to expropriate any donated labour. This points to there being an effect of institution on pro-social behaviour. By contrast, the mission-matching approach (e.g., Besley and Ghatak, 2005) suggests that individuals and organisations match according to mission. In this case pro-socially motivated individuals may engage in pro-social behaviour in any environment but they are drawn to non-profit organisations with similar missions and it is the selection effect that ensures the association between pro-social behaviour and non-profit. In the paper we use data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) to investigate the cross section relationship between institutional form and pro-social behaviour and then, to address the selection versus ‘institutional form’ issue, the degree of adjustment in pro-social behaviour when individuals change sectors. The key advantage of the BHPS is that it has the required information on sector of employment (distinguishing public, private and not-for-profit) and on unpaid overtime, a wide array of individual and job specific data, and allows us to exploit the panel to look at what happens when individuals change sector. We show that individuals in the non-profit sector are significantly more likely to do unpaid overtime than those in the for-profit sector. However, we find no evidence of adjustment along either the extensive or intensive margins when individuals change sectors. This result, therefore, rules out institutional effects operating on individuals' behaviour, implying that the association between pro-social behaviour and sector of employment arises as a result of selection.3 The next section briefly outlines our empirical strategy, while Section 3 contains further details on the data and definitions of key variables. In Section 4 we show that individuals in the non-profit sector are indeed significantly more likely to donate labour, controlling for a wide range of individual- and job-specific characteristics. In Section 5 we estimate a simple fixed effects panel data model which shows no evidence that individuals change their donated labour when they switch sector pointing to a selection mechanism and in Section 6 we present evidence consistent with this. Section 7 concludes.

This paper provides evidence of a link between institutional environment and pro-social behaviour using UK survey data on individuals' actual behaviour in the workplace. Once purged of career concerns, unpaid overtime provides a direct measure of the extra effort that individuals put into employment for which they are not remunerated; we show that individuals in the non-profit sector are significantly more likely to do unpaid overtime than those in the for-profit sector. We can rule out that this result is attributable to implicit contracts since we find no evidence of adjustment along either the extensive or intensive margins when individuals change sectors. The fixed effects results point to selection as the mechanism through which the relationship between sector of employment and pro-social behaviour arises; consistent with this, we find supporting evidence that individuals do self-select on the basis of their propensity to donate labour.