Job Performance and the Employment

Relationship in a non-profit Organization

Greenpeace International

Maastricht University
School of Business and Economics
Maastricht, 11.12.2014
Names: Mertens, Lucas
Kppen, Tobi

I6053744
I6056392

De Moffarts, Louis I6049563

Study: International Business
Major: Organizations
Course: Job Perf. & the Employm. Relationship
Course Code: EBC 2138
Tutorial number: 02
Tutor Name: Erik de Regt
Writing Assignment: Personal Policy Report

Table of content
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.

Outset
Introduction to Greenpeace
Intrinsic Motivation
Selection and Signalling
Agency problems, Performance rewards and Intrinsic motivation
Training and Development
Careers and Promotions
Conclusion
References

Outset
Over the last decades, there has been growing interest in the job performance and employment
relationship, and how insights gained translate into added value. Most of the research done
until today has focused on American for-profit companies. This paper however, will elaborate
on facts and issues as well as possible solutions a non-profit company might have to take into
consideration when designing and maintaining the employment relation with its workers, at
the hands of an explanatory organization, namely Greenpeace International (Greenpeace).
After a short introduction to Greenpeace, the selection and signalling process of potential
employees and the organization will be highlighted. We will then take a look at different
motivators, specifically intrinsic motivation and the reward scheme. Related to the reward
scheme, training and development as well as careers and promotions will be thematised in
subsequent sections. Lastly, we will summarize our main findings and end with a conclusion.

Introduction to Greenpeace
Greenpeace is an internationally operating non-profit political organization, its mission being
the protection and preservation of the environment. It was founded in 1971 by peace-activists
in Vancouver and is currently headquartered in Amsterdam. Historically the organization saw
its main priority in fighting nuclear testing and whaling. Over time saving the rain forests and
global warming have become additional fields of commitment. Although Greenpeace has only
around 2400 permanent employees, it is one of most widely recognized non-profit
organization, with active members numbering more than three million. Notable past successes
are the ending of commercial whaling and the early stop of many nuclear test programs.

Intrinsic Motivation
As mentioned before, Greenpeace is a non-profit organization, which constitutes a
fundamental difference to the majority of organizations, being profit-oriented. It is
straightforward to assume that motivations to perform a job at each of the two types of
organization differ: whereas in profit-oriented organizations extrinsic motivation (motivation
to perform a task due to external incentives, such as monetary rewards or threats) holds a
dominant role, in non-profit organizations extrinsic motivation seems to play a minor role,
with intrinsic motivation holding the dominant role. Intrinsic motivation describes the desire
to perform a task (well), for the inner benefits derived from doing it, rather than external
motivation provided by management or principals. Throughout the following sections,

intrinsic motivation will therefore be a resurfacing topic, connecting individual topics and
pointing towards the leitmotif of this paper, of how a non-profit organization like Greenpeace
attracts, manages and retains its workforce.

Selection & Signalling

For any company, profit or non-profit, the selection of the right job candidates is a pressing
issue. As pointed out before, most job candidates applying for jobs at Greenpeace will be, to
some extent and differing with the type of job considered, intrinsically motivated. It is
tempting to think that the only dimension of relevance to recruiters when it comes to assessing
job applicants will therefore be motivation. To Greenpeace and its recruiters it is however
equally or even more important to also run its organization as efficient and effective as
possible, which can only be achieved through hiring the most productive employees.
Accordingly motivation is not a substitute, but rather a complement of hard skill (like
education, experience) in the relevant field for a given job. It is therefore not surprising that
the application process at Greenpeace is a lengthy and extensive procedure, comparable to
those of large for-profit firms.
The process usually followed is:
Short listing
First interview (phone, Skype, or video conference)
Second interview (face-to-face or video conference)
Job offer
Reference check
Noteworthy, Greenpeace assesses capabilities first (e.g. short listing based on grades for entry
level white-collar positions) as a sort of qualifier. Once an applicant has taken this hurdle, he
has to undergo more subjective assessments, such as a first and second interview. During
these interviews a panel investigates the potential job candidates fit with the company and
the job in question, the final result being based on a joint decision of the panel. Especially for
higher ranked and key positions, such as campaigners, an intense screening process is
profitable, as a good part of performance evaluation will be subjective and stakes are high
(Lazear & Gibbs, 2009). In contrast to these higher ranked positions, lower positions with less
impact on the overall organizational performance, such as fundraisers, are filled with less
prior assessment of the candidates. An interesting feature of personnel policy at Greenpeace

(which will resurface in the Careers and Promotion section) is however the practice of
recruiting these lower ranking employees into higher positions, once they have proven their
commitment to the company over a longer period of time, creating a credible signal to the
organization.
Another aspect Greenpeace stresses on its website is the perception of the application process
as a mutual undertaking, not only giving Greenpeace the chance to scan and test applicants,
but also allowing applicants to realistically assess whether their beliefs and expectations about
the company are realistic. The importance of this is not to be underestimated, as will become
clear in subsequent sections of this paper. It mitigates the occurrence of a non-profit specific
form of agency problem, namely the hijacking of the company by employees who are too
extreme in their opinion of where the company should go mission-wise.
Signalling is therefore not only important from the perspective of a job candidate selling
himself, but also from the perspective of Greenpeace, as an organization on its quest to attract
the brightest and most productive employees. Greenpeaces desire for a truly diverse, multiskilled and committed range of employees (greenpeace.org) and the related liberal and
modern job-atmosphere is signalled to potential employees by using not only traditional
channels for posting vacancies, but social media like Facebook as well. Marketing of the
corporate brand, a concept established in the academic field of Brand Management, appears to
be highly relevant for Greenpeace overall: any marketing channel the company uses, such as
its website, the above mentioned social media but also personal portrays of employees, is used
to consistently convey the corporate image of being an altruistic, caring, young and innovative
organization with flat hierarchies, making it a fun and rewarding place to work.
Based on the above considerations, matching seems to play a vital role in Greenpeaces
personnel policy considerations. In addition to having to assess and select job candidates
skills, assessing their intrinsic motivation and, relatedly, their willingness to adhere to
Greenpeaces mission and culture complicates the selection process. The existence of the
above mentioned extensive and expensive screening policies indicates however, that
Greenpeace perceives substantial benefits to be gained from selecting and hiring the right
employees based on both, skill and intrinsic motivation.
Matching, or sorting, at non-profit organizations is a topic which has received increasing
attention in contemporary research, stressing its distinctiveness from personnel policy at
profit-oriented organizations. Besley and Ghatak (2005) investigate the implications of
dealing with what they call motivated agents, employees who are intrinsically motivated
and who in turn self-select into organizations with similar goals. Besley and Ghataks

perspective describes precisely the starting point of this analysis, namely of selection and
signalling at Greenpeace, where intrinsic motivation plays a key role for employees.
A consideration of Besley and Ghatak directly related to selection and signalling is what they
call mission drift. This mission drift describes essentially the same as what has been
introduced above as the hijacking of the firm by over-motivated or extremist employees. This
is indeed a topic of concern for Greenpeace, as the company relies on donations from the
public and has repeatedly been accused of using too extreme or violent measures to fight for
its mission. (e.g. as eco-terrorists). Further, Besley and Ghatak state that agents differ in the
degree of their motivation, and that even for motivated agents a 100% between their own and
the companys mission is unlikely. The proposed ideal solution is a compromise, somewhere
between the motivated agents and the companys mission, resulting in the optimal level of
productivity. This underlines the already established importance of selecting employees, who
fit the company, its values and mission, and to accurately detect and interpret job candidates
signals about their level of intrinsic motivation. The subsequent section of this paper will
elaborate further on the topic of intrinsic motivation in the context of performance rewards at
Greenpeace.

Agency problems, Performance rewards and intrinsic motivation

Interest alignment between a firm and its employees has always been a crucial topic in
personnel economics, commonly referred to as Principal-agent problem. Indeed, firms want
their employees to be as productive as possible while employees often try to exert lower
levels of effort or pursue goals different from the organizations. This attitude for the worker
seems more typical in the profit sector than in non-profit organizations.

The general point

made above, of workers not putting forth as much effort as the firm contracted them to do
seems not applicable at Greenpeace since the company puts a lot of emphasis on hiring
employees with similar values to the corporate mission and culture. It should accordingly
experience lower levels of shirking and deviant behaviour of its staff. However, Principalagent problems might arise on a completely different and Greenpeace-idiosyncratic level:
Employees being over-motivated or very extreme in their opinions about how to protect the
planet, to an extent that is not beneficial to the organization anymore. As an example, in 2009,
two Greenpeace employees have been arrested and appeared in court on charges of stealing
whale meat in Japan. Similarly inappropriate behaviour could also happen at more officebased employee groups. Even if intentions are good, members acting in these ways deteriorate

the organizations reputation, which can have a severely adverse impact on the companys
future fund raising success, a worst-case scenario for any donation-funded organization.
Factors affecting employee motivation differ significantly in the for-profit and the not forprofit sector. Indeed, the difference between both sectors is the degree to which intrinsic or
extrinsic motivation drives employee behaviour. Extrinsic motivational factors (performing a
task in the pursuit of a reward or to avoid a punishment) are more common in the for-profit
sector, where employees decide to work in exchange of pecuniary benefits. On the other side,
workers in the non-for-profit sector are more driven by intrinsic motivations (motivation that
is driven by internal rewards). Because of the organizational mission of Greenpeace, it is
clear that employees of the company are more motivated by intrinsic factors such as selffulfilment, for example protecting the environment through helping the company achieve its
mission or by social recognition, rather than pecuniary benefits.
The paper Wage equity and employee in non-profit and for-profit organizations by Leete
(2000) elaborates on the assumption that employees in non-profit organizations are more
intrinsically motivated. Therefore, those establishments rely more on intrinsically than
extrinsically motivated workers. In order to find inherently interested workers, non-profit
organizations can use lower wages as a negative screening device. Indeed, by offering lower
salaries to their employees compared to the profit sector, non-profit companies are able to
eliminate extrinsically motivated workers only looking for pecuniary benefits. Therefore, nonprofit organizations should offer lower wages to lower level employees to see which workers
are motivated by the task of the job and which ones are not. This view has been further
confirmed by Benedict & McClough (2006) in his article the price of Morals. In this paper,
the authors propose their moral satisfaction-salary trade-off theory. The theory claims that
wages and moral satisfaction are substitutes, and individuals put an economic value on moral.
This value can be deducted from wages and makes employee accept lower salary.
Furthermore, this screening mechanism reduces the agency conflict between both parties
since their goals are aligned and employees are truly interested in the prospect of the
company. However, in order to keep their workers motivated, non-profit companies should
reward employees with promotions and other benefits, which is common practice at
Greenpeace, as further outlined in the Careers and Promotions section of this paper.
This is related to the fact that Greenpeace is a non-profit organization with an already
established reputation, attracting many prospective employees that want to work for them. As
an example, in New Zealand, fundraisers are paid a base salary of 18,40NZ$ (14US$) per
hour which is not much compared to other job opportunities in the country. However, those

employees are also getting bonuses depending on meeting the targets and their length of time
at the company. Greenpeace also offers development opportunities to the most motivated
workers. Actually, outstanding campaigners and fundraisers can be promoted to team leaders
or trainers and giving their workers more responsibility and more flexibility in the way they
are working. This gives even more incentives for employees to work hard, in order to move
up the career ladder.
Furthermore, in order to keep their workers motivated, Leete advises non-profit companies to
keep certain wage equity between employees within the organization. Certainly, wage
dispersion between employees can have a negative impact on workers moral. Workers who
are paid less will feel unfairly treated and this feeling will promote the eviction of intrinsic
motivation. Those employees are then more likely to lower their effort and as a result
productivity and group cohesiveness is likely to drop.
This policy of wage equity or compression is indeed in place at Greenpeace. The company is
trying to keep wages of their employees equal. As an example, in 2010, the international
executive director of the organization, Kumi Naidoo was paid a salary of $115,769 which is
not much compared to CEOs of for-profit companies. As a benchmark, the average salary of
CEOs of a company in the S&P500 was $1,109,715 in 2012 without accounting for bonuses
and other compensations. Thus the spread of salary between executives and lower level
employees in the for-profit sector is much bigger than in the non-for-profit sector.
Having recognized that employees at Greenpeace are more intrinsically motivated than driven
by pecuniary benefits or other extrinsic factors, it is appropriate to analyse the impact of
employees motivation on the performance of the company. The paper Productivity, wages
and intrinsic motivations by Becchetti, Castriota and Tortia (2013) investigates the effect of
motivation on wage and productivity. In his paper, the authors discuss two different
hypotheses to explain this. The Donative labour hypothesis states that intrinsically
motivated employees find superior non-pecuniary benefits when they are working in the nonprofit sector and that therefore they accept to give up on a part of their wages. The
satisfaction offered by intrinsic factors acts as compensation to the difference in wage
between the profit and non-profit sector. The other hypothesis stated in the article is the
Intrinsic motivation productive hypothesis testifying that intrinsically motivated workers
perform better than extrinsically motivated employees and therefore receive higher wages.
Although the paper does not discard the first hypothesis, it supports the second one.
However, concerning Greenpeace, the donative labour hypothesis is more of application since
the company does not offer higher wages than in the profit sector where employees have

lower level of intrinsic motivation. Furthermore the authors argue over the importance to link
corporate goals to employee motivation in order to increase productivity. This is completely
applicable for the organization since prospective employees wanting to apply at the company
are more driven by the company mission and the corporate culture than by the pecuniary
benefits offered by the company. Because employees at Greenpeace are more compelled by
inherent motives, productivity is enhanced. For example, the screening mechanism explained
earlier is able to find a better match between workers and the company and thereby can lower
some costs due to the agency problem between them. Indeed, Greenpeace does not have to
bear huge monitoring costs as non-profit organizations do since employees in non-profit
establishments do have lower incentives to shirk.
Another way an organizations can motivate workers in order to be more productive is through
job design. Job design refers to any sets of activities involving the alteration of specific tasks
or interdependent schemes of jobs aiming to improve the quality of employees work
experience and their productivity. The well-known psychological model of intrinsic
motivation by Richard Hackman et. al. explains the link between core job characteristics,
motivation, and productivity as work outcome. According to the authors, five core job
characteristics, namely skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy and feedback
can be used to increase employee motivation and consequently productivity. Those job
characteristics should create a psychological state where employees feel the meaningfulness
and responsibility and know the results of their work. Finally, this psychological state drives
employees to be more motivated, which in turn increases the quality of their work as well as
lowering the absenteeism and the turnover rate. By having the opportunity to learn new skills
and to learn on the job, workers are intellectually challenged by their jobs and therefore their
motivation increases.
Greenpeace actually offers some flexibility and autonomy to their employees in the job
design. Indeed, campaigners in New Zealand design themselves how they are working by
choosing their workdays as well as their strategy to recruit new supporters. Those employees
have some autonomy on how they design their campaign even if they still have to meet some
responsibilities imposed by the organization. Furthermore, campaigners have a weekly
meeting where they receive a feedback on their performance, which can help them to assess
the quality of their work. This flexibility in the job design of employees further reinforces
their intrinsic motivation to perform well and make them feel personally invested in the
organization and the goals they try to achieve. Consequently, the quality and the productivity
of work rise.

Training and development

A very important aspect at Greenpeace is training and the development of employees.
Greenpeace is committed to the growth and development of staff and fostering a creative
workplace culture (Greenpeace website). Early onwards, new workers are being trained inhouse as well as from outsiders. Even volunteers have to follow a demanding workshop
before being allowed to help the company. The so-called Greenpeace Semester combines
classroom-based workshops, exercises and discussions with real-world projects as well as
travelling to work in communities (greenpeace.org). However, although the company initially
pays in terms of monetary values, the costs of training are shared between the workers and the
firm. This is due to the fact that the information and skills acquired are very firm specific and
are likely to be of limited use for employees in the open job market. So ending the
employment relationship after receiving training would leave the workers at roughly the same
market value for other firms, regardless of the skills they learned at Greenpeace. The reason
why Greenpeace can still choose from a large amount of workers willing to take training is
due to their profession. As mentioned before, their mission to ensure the ability of Earth to
nurture life in all its diversity is something that many people share, and what they are willing
for to work.
Jobs are largely different at Greenpeace, with many responsibilities one has to take from early
on. In the following, an example from their website for a Climate energy liability
campaigner is shown:
Responsibilities:
-

Develop and execute a work plan for short and long term goals for the campaign

Strategic and tactical decision making

Build alliances and support relationships with constituencies

Conduct research and analysis

Press releases and media planning

Spokesperson for campaigns

Public events

Manage projects and campaigns

Negotiations

Manage budgets

Participate in direct action events

In this example, it becomes clear that a variety of duties have to be covered. Many jobs in the
job market focus rather on strategic decision making only or on being a spokesperson for the
media. Here, Greenpeace looks for all-rounders, people who cover many skills already. One
way of making sure to fill these demanding positions is to find and train potential employees
in-house. So the next session will focus on Development Programs at Greenpeace.
Following the idea that learning is like rowing against the current as soon as one stops, one
drifts back, Greenpeace offers a variety of development programs to its employees. Being a
company full of international and diverse people, Greenpeace strives to create an environment
that is built on respect, taking initiatives and working creatively together. Personal
development takes an important part and the company offers enough time and provides a large
budget for this area. Especially individual strengths and weaknesses are taken into account
when designing a training concept for employees. The main aim is to enhance current skills to
fulfil valuable jobs and higher qualified tasks in the future. It is very clear that Greenpeace is
interested in a long-term employment relationship, as the costs for the company can only be
paid back with long term performance. However, as Lazear and Gibbs mention in their book
Personal Economics in Practice, it is very difficult to agree on a formal contract that provides
either side of the table with a security that a payoff will occur. So at Greenpeace workers
could, after receiving training, just leave the company, leaving Greenpeace with a negative
outcome of the relationship. However, there are a couple of reasons why workers are unlikely
to do so. Firstly, as the job is mostly chosen by people who believe in the core values of
Greenpeace and who want to make a difference in how we treat the planet, they are highly
intrinsic motivated to stay at the firm. There are not many companies who offer the same
possibilities to make this difference, resulting in a relatively thin job market. The second point
is that the newly acquired knowledge, as mentioned above, is of no high value to the large job
market. Offers to be trained for a job as a campaigner, or even campaign-leader, include
skills that most other companies are unlikely to value as high as Greenpeace does. So by
investing time and effort to learn skills that only raise the workers value at Greenpeace, a
switch in jobs is likely to lead to a negative outcome. However, even very firm-specific skills
and knowledge might be valuable to the broader job market, and are therefore likely to
increase the value of the worker.
Obviously, the company is only willing to pay high amounts and time for training and
development, because the value of it will exceed the current costs. So they focus strongly on
key players such as Campaigners and Leaders, who deliver the biggest Changes and
Optimization Success. (Translated from German pdf) Looking at the turnover rate at

Greenpeace in higher positions shows that their strategy is paying off. Although annual
turnover rates in non-profit organizations are generally very high, even up to 10%, in the
higher positions the company is able to retain their talents. These workers generally stay
longer at Greenpeace, which additionally increases the payoff to the firm, and lowers the costs
of selection and recruiting. Additional and extraordinary training such as climbing, sailing or
diving is also provided, due to the large diversity of campaigns and projects Greenpeace
executes. This attracts an even larger variety of people in the first place, who are likely to
accept a lower monetary rate in exchange for these special training opportunities. So-called
Hedonic wages, which are non-monetary motivational incentives such as moral satisfaction of
doing the job, make it possible to pay lower wages than usual for Greenpeace.
After the Training periods are finished, Greenpeace is very eager in controlling the success of
methods used. The company introduced a number of measures such as feedback-forms,
follow-up seminars or groups to exchange experiences. That way they are able to
continuously improve the Training and Development of their workforce.

Careers and Promotions

At Greenpeace, career opportunities and promotions are not only possible, but encouraged by
the company. One example is Nathan Santry, who began as a volunteer and canvasser for
Greenpeace in 1988. Being an actions director at Greenpeace now, Nathan manages
Greenpeace's nonviolent direct actions and trains the upcoming activist community. As
already mentioned in previous sections, incentives for the workforce are not only monetary
based, but to large extents of intrinsic nature. Using promotions to get up in the hierarchy
rewards employees not only with a monetary raise, but more importantly with more
responsibility and decision making in future actions taken by Greenpeace.
Notably this can be linked back to Besley and Ghataks (2005) consideration, of the eventual
mission, or rather its translation into practice, of non-profit organizations being negotiated
between agents and owners (the founders and the board of directors in the case of
Greenpeace). They propose that the closer the mission of the organization to the personal
mission preferences of the agent, the greater the intrinsic benefits derived from work will be.
Along these lines, additional decision rights, and the accompanying power to influence the
organizations direction associated with a promotion, may indeed be a stronger incentive to
put forth increased efforts, than the monetary benefits to be expected from the career
advancement.

As many employees at Greenpeace, such as Nathan, start their career with the sole aim to
create a green and peaceful future, it is assumed that they value the sign of recognition and
being valued as important for the company much more than pay-rises. This is also being
reflected in the wages paid to top executives in comparison with other large corporations. The
average wage of top executives in a fortune 500 company amounts to over 220,000$ (2012).
One of Greenpeace most senior executives, Pascal Husting, in 2013 working as the
International Programme director, earns around 85,000$ a year. This is relatively low when
compared to the salary offer of 24,000 (30,000$) for the position of a Junior Marketing
Manager in Austria (greenpeace.org) and reinforces the point of high wage compression made
earlier. The question to be asked then is, why top employees with remarkable skills still stay
at a company that pays much less than others? The answer can only be intrinsically derived
benefits and non-monetary incentives. Prominent examples for these non-monetary benefits at
Greenpeace are for example an appealing work-life balance, as well as flexibility in working
hours. Especially for highly skilled female, but also more and more male employees these
aspects can be pivotal, allowing them to work in an interesting and challenging job, pursuing
a rewarding career while being able to spend time with family and friends or on general
leisure activities.
Career prospects and incentives do not only play a role for CEOs and top executives however.
To most employees the chance to advance in the hierarchy of the company is assumed to be
existent. There seems to be no reason why this should be different for a non-profit
organization.. The subsequent section therefore attempts to shed a light on career-based
incentives in place at Greenpeace for both fundraisers as well as campaigners, which together
make up a substantial part of Greenpeaces 2400 permanent employees (wikipedia.org). The
existence of more than 15000 volunteers working for Greenpeace and how they are affected
by career-based incentives is an interesting issue which will be addressed in brief as well.
Fundraisers are paid a base salary, for example 14$ (18,8NZ$) per hour in New Zealand, plus
bonus and incentives (trademe.co.nz). For the hard work they do (mostly door-to-door
acquisition) this is relatively little, compared to for-profit door-to-door sales earning
opportunities. What might make these jobs, as well as internships, attractive to applicants is
the opportunity to increase the odds of joining the company in a more permanent and serious
position, for example as a campaigner. This becomes evident in a statement on Greenpeaces
website, under the career section, which reads It will look better at your interview if you
have already taken action with Greenpeace. Although this might be the case for many forprofit firms as well, the inclusion of a career-based incentive, like a promotion to a more

serious position, seems especially strong for Greenpeace and makes sense when thinking back
to the Selection and Signalling section of this paper, elaborating on hiring standards. With its
focus on employees who share the company vision and mission and its selective hiring
processes, seriously interested prospective employees might value the opportunity to create a
credible signal of their commitment to the organization more than the foregone earnings
(which they could have earned at a for-profit company, doing the same job essentially). The
possible conflict highlighted by Lazear and Gibbs (2009) that might arise from using
promotions as incentive system does not seem to be present at Greenpeace. Rather the
practice appears as an intentional incentive system, promoting performance as well as being
helpful in sorting applicants for critical jobs (for example campaigners).
A related issue of interest must then be the question of how fundraisers are actually selected
for promotion. Promotion in this case relates to a higher rank in the fundraising department
rather than the afore mentioned concept of cross-promotion to a more permanent
department. Fortunately, first-hand experience of the author of this section in direct sales,
combined with knowledge gained from an interview (C. Nowacki, private conversation,
November 22, 2014) with a former intern at Greenpeace sheds light on this topic.
The promotion rule deployed for fundraisers (and direct sales employees in general) is that of
a standard. Once the fundraiser has surpassed a certain threshold of funds raised (per
day/week) and, more importantly, been able to uphold this level for a certain period of time,
he is promoted to the next level. In most cases this will be the role of a group leader, leading a
small group of lower-level fundraisers. This promotion usually includes monetary rewards, by
assigning a percentage of subordinates sales revenue to the team leader, as a bonus which
simultaneously serves as motivation to help subordinates increase performance.
Unfortunately, no information on promotion rules for campaigners is available at this point of
time. It seems rather likely however, that tournaments, as described by Lazear and Gibbs
(2009) are used to identify candidates for promotion, as performance is not as easily measured
as in the case of fundraisers. Difficulties to objectively measure performance make the use of
quantifiable thresholds impracticable and support the use of subjective performance measures,
as described in previous work more appealing. The use of tournament decision rules seems
even more likely in the face of evidence for substantial outside hiring for higher campaigning
positions (C. Nowacki, private conversation, November 22, 2014). As pointed out by Lazear
and Gibbs (2009), combining tournaments with outside hiring is an attractive option for
ensuring motivational as well as sorting efficiency.

Conclusion
This paper has elaborated on the employment relationship in the non-profit sector, using the
example of Greenpeace. Specifically, the aim was to answer the question of how a company
with a non-economic mission and vision is able to acquire, motivate and retain its workforce.
In applying previous literature as well as new insights into several topics, we shed light on the
usage of intrinsic motivation and moral satisfaction as benefits to highly qualified employees.
As Greenpeace offers a corporate culture and mission that many people can identify with,
these potential employees are not only willing to work for the company, but also to accept
lower-than-average wages in return. As a result, Greenpeace achieves a high return on its
workers. In addition, the signalling to workers that one needs to embrace the corporate culture
to be accepted and satisfied leads to strong selection and matching in workforce. This not only
decreases costs of recruiting and turnover, but also creates an environment where trust is big
enough for extensive training and development. In promoting many employees from the
internal job market, Greenpeace is able to identify and develop the right workers for the right
jobs. The factors and managerial implications described in this paper show possible ways of
how to motivate employees with other benefits than money, and how this can have an effect
on the company as a whole.

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