Do social enterprises attract workers who are more pro-socially motivated than their counterparts in for-profit organizations to perform low-skilled jobs?

Abstract

The literature highlights that social enterprises (SEs) attract workers who are motivated to help others and to meet the social aims in which they believe. However, this assumption is challenged in the case of low-skilled jobs. Therefore, we have performed an empirical study in the quasi-market of service vouchers in Belgium to know if SEs attract workers who have a different motivational profile than their counterparts in for-profit organizations (FPOs) to perform low skilled jobs (N = 217). No significant differences were found. Next, we have compared FPOs with two types of social enterprises, Home Care Services Organizations (HCSOs) and Work Integration Social enterprises (WISEs), and again no significant differences were found for the whole sample. However, it seems that a selection effect exists in WISEs when the sample is reduced to people who were not previously unemployed. In others words, when WISEs deviate from their initial mission of ‘hiring the most vulnerable people on the labor market’, it is only to hire workers whose are highly motivated to achieve the organization’s mission and who fit with the values defended by the organization.