High-power incentives increase productivity through two distinct channels: attracting high-skilled workers and incentivizing high effort. We study experimentally how work mission interacts with these two channels. We construct “private sector firms” offering low base and high piece rate wages and “public sector firms” offering high base and low piece rate wages. In different parts of the experiment workers are either exogenously allocated to a sector or endogenously choose a sector in each period. This design allows us to disentangle and measure independently the sorting and the incentivizing effects. The addition of public sector mission attracts higher ability workers to the public firms and leads to greater effort when working in the public firms—while having no effect on average productivity, work time or average ability in the private firms. Consequently, the total productivity gap is diminishes by 30 percent. These results highlight the importance of cultivating a sense of mission in organizations.

高动力激励机制通过两种截然不同的渠道提高了生产率：吸引高技能工人和激励努力。我们通过实验研究工作任务如何与这两个渠道相互作用。我们构建了提供低基数和高计件工资的“私营部门公司”，以及构建了提供高基数和低计件工资的“公共部门公司”。在实验的不同部分中，工人要么在每个时期外生地分配到一个部门，要么内生地选择一个部门。这种设计使我们能够独立处理和衡量排序和激励效果。增加公共部门的使命吸引了能力更高的工人加入公共公司，并导致在公共公司工作时付出了更多的努力，而对平均生产率，工作时间或私营公司的平均能力没有影响。因此，总的生产率差距缩小了30％。这些结果突出了在组织中培养使命感的重要性。