Seeking to Belong: How the Words of Internal and External Beneficiaries Influence Performance

Paul Green,Francesca Gino

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2912271

Abstract

In this paper, we examine how connecting to beneficiaries of one’s work increases performance, and argue that beneficiaries internal to an organization (i.e., one’s own colleague) can serve as an important source of motivation, even in jobs that — on the surface — may seem routine and low on potential impact. We suggest that this occurs because words of beneficiaries strengthen one’s sense of belongingness, a key driver of human behavior. Employees, in fact, seek to belong — and seek to enhance their sense of belongingness in work settings. We conducted two studies using both field and laboratory data from different populations to investigate the psychological consequences and performance benefits of connecting to beneficiaries of one’s work. In a longitudinal field experiment of fruit harvesters, we find that though beneficiary contact with the overall customer did not significantly improve productivity, contact with an internal beneficiary that made connectedness salient yielded a persistent increase in productivity relative to a control group. We validate this effect in the laboratory, and provide evidence that the effect is mediated by an enhanced sense of belongingness.

Highlights

The American short story, “The Man Without a Country”, by Edward Everett Hale, set in the early 19th century, tells the fictional tale of Army lieutenant Philip Nolan (Hale, 1918)
We propose that organizations can leverage this drive, creating opportunities through small interventions, for employees to interact with others with whom they have, or seek to have, a belongingness relationship—and in doing so, increase motivation to perform to the benefit of other employees in interdependent functions
Our work extends the growing relational job design literature (Morgeson and Campion, 2003; Grant, 2007; Grant and Parker, 2009)—and the expansive work motivation literature, more generally (Hackman and Oldham, 1980; Mitchell and Daniels, 2003; Latham and Pinder, 2005)—by showing one important path by which interactions with others can lead to increases in performance, even in job domains where the impact on beneficiaries is distant or abstract

Summary

Introduction

The American short story, “The Man Without a Country”, by Edward Everett Hale, set in the early 19th century, tells the fictional tale of Army lieutenant Philip Nolan (Hale, 1918). RELATIONAL JOB DESIGN AND SOCIAL IMPACT Recent advances in the examination of the motivational potential of job characteristics suggest that interaction with the beneficiaries of one’s work can enhance the worker’s perception of their work’s significance, leading to an increase in prosocial motivation to the benefit of those beneficiaries (Grant, 2007; Grant et al, 2007; Grant, 2008a, 2008b).

Results

Conclusion