, one awkward startup founder after the other pitches their company by proclaiming that it “makes the world a better place.” The satirical comedy highlights how common it has become for companies to tout how their work benefits human welfare.— appears to be on the rise. We see it across job postings, company websites, and consumer advertisements, with for-profits and non-profits alike looking to hire “passionate” and “mission-oriented” workers seeking to “make an impact.
In our first study, we recruited 392 participants from an online research platform to examine workers’ attitudes in response to different types of organizational messaging. Approximately half of the participants read about a company that emphasizes social impact, while the others read a more generic company description. We asked participants to write open-ended responses about whether or not they would negotiate a job offer to work for the company, and why.
We replicated these results in three other studies. We found that the effects held true in a workplace simulation and across a range of industries, including education, health care, manufacturing, and finance. We also found that social impact framing largely affects job candidate requests for monetary job rewards, such as salary and bonuses. It does not seem to deter them from asking for non-monetary rewards like vacation time and health care benefits.