What Motivates Jobseekers to Prefer to Work for Non-profits Versus the Governmental Sector? Evidence from India

Abstract Non-profits require highly motivated and professional employees to fulfill their potential to contribute to community development and well-being. But what motivates jobseekers to seek employment in non-profits over governmental organizations, and what makes non-profits more attractive than governmental organizations? Leveraging positive religious and spiritual development and self-determination theories, we theorize that spiritual and religious individuals are more likely to prefer working for non-profits over governmental organizations. This preference occurs because religious and spiritual individuals have stronger traits of self-sacrifice and compassion that motivate them to take a job that offers more non-material incentives than material incentives, leading to a preference for non-profits over governmental organizations. The serial mediation model identifies how compassion and self-sacrifice mediate the effects of spiritual intelligence and religiosity on job motivation; while job motivation mediates the effect of self-sacrifice and compassion on career preference and sector attractiveness. We validate our serial mediation-based conceptual framework based on responses from 306 job seekers in India. The results support our hypotheses, where individuals high on spirituality and religiosity prefer working in non-profits over governmental sector, owing to higher compassion, and self-sacrificing tendencies.