Do Social Missions Reduce Data-Driven Decision-Making?

Socially-driven organizations with missions beyond profits are becoming increasingly prevalent. Recent research in accounting shows that emphasizing a social mission can substantially alter employee behavior. We build on this research and argue that social missions can make it more difficult to develop a data-driven culture by exacerbating employee algorithm aversion. Our theory is that emphasizing a social rather than a profit-oriented mission increases employees’ prosocial motivation, which then makes them more averse to the cold, quantification of algorithms. To test this theory, we conduct two experiments – one in a financial setting with real monetary consequences and another in an educational setting with hypothetical choices. As expected, emphasizing a social rather than profit mission reduces participants’ reliance on algorithmic advice relative to human advice. Unexpectedly, pay-for-performance does not mitigate this effect. Overall, our study suggests that social missions can exacerbate algorithm aversion, implying a potential downside of prosocial motivation