by Nomad
A recent study suggests that corporations that take an active interest in social cause may increase the work performance of the employees.
Some economists are still asking whether corporations should be getting themselves involved in social issues at all.
Albert Einstein once said that it was "every man's obligation to put back into the world at least the equivalent of what he takes out of it."
Duty and obligations aside, a new
study by the University of Southampton, may give business owners an even more
practical reason to work on social causes. It can increase productivity by up
to 30 per cent.
Dr
Mirco Tonin, the lead author of the study, said that while the use of bonus and stock options
have long been used as an incentive to improve worker performance, there's another lesser-known motivating factor.When workers are given a social
incentive such as a charitable donation linked to their job, says, Tonin, performance increases by an average of 13 percent, rising to 30 per cent among those who are initially the least
productive.
"Our results provide empirical support for the growing recognition that some workers are also motivated by advancing social causes through their efforts."
The study also found that performance was enhanced to a greater degree
when workers could decide how much of their wages they wished to contribute. More than half of the study participants chose
to give a proportion of their pay to the charity they choose when the donation
were optional.
"We find that offering subjects some discretion in choosing their own payment scheme leads to a substantial improvement in performance," says Dr Tonin. "This suggests that firms willing to introduce corporate giving programs may want to consider giving employees the opportunity to 'opt in.'"
The study Corporate Philanthropy and Productivity: Evidence from an Online Real
Effort Experiment will be published in the forthcoming edition of Management
Science.
