If You Do What You Love, Will The Money Follow? How Work Orientation Impacts Objective Career Outcomes via Managerial (Mis)perceptions

Abstract

Existing research has implied conflicting views on whether individuals with a calling orientation toward work (seeing work as personally fulfilling and contributing to a better world) enjoy more favorable objective career outcomes, such as higher income and chance of promotion, compared to those with a job orientation (seeing work as a means to a financial end). We suggest that the impasse is in part due to prior research’s exclusive focus on how work orientation affects one’s effort and subsequent job performance. Drawing on theories of signaling, cognitive biases, and reciprocity, we propose that calling-oriented employees enjoy better objective career outcomes than job-oriented employees via an external pathway: managers misperceive the employees’ calling orientation as evidence of better performance and a stronger commitment to the organization. In Study 1 — analyses of the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study — we find support for the main effect, and in Study 2 — an online experiment — we constructively replicate this effect and find evidence for our predicted explanatory mechanisms. Furthermore, we find that observing a calling-oriented employee prompts managers to perceive them more favorably in several other domains, creating a halo effect. Our research sheds new light on how individuals’ subjective view of the meaning of work influences their objective career success, highlighting workplace signals and managerial perceptions as important mechanisms.