Prior scholarly approaches to meaningful work have largely fallen into two camps. One focuses on identifying how work can contribute to a meaningful life. The other studies the antecedents and outcomes of workers experiencing their work as meaningful. Neither of these approaches, however, captures what people look for when they seek meaningful work—or so I argue. In this paper, I give a new, commitment-based account of meaningful work by focusing on the reasons people have to (...) choose meaningful work over other options. I draw on philosopher Ruth Chang’s account of voluntarist reasons (reasons that arise from an act of the will) to argue that commitments can create distinctive reasons to pursue certain work. It is the presence of these distinctive reasons that makes work meaningful. (shrink)

Drawing from the grounded theory of work engagement, this research aims to explore three essential yet previously unexamined pathways—work meaningfulness, emotion regulation, and job competence in simultaneously transmitting the effects of mindfulness training to employee experience of work engagement. We employed a six-wave quasi-experimental design and recruited 129 employees to participate in the quasi-experiment, and tested our simultaneous mediating models using the structural equation modeling. Results showed that mindfulness facilitated employees’ work meaningfulness, emotion regulation, (...) and job competence, which in turn enhanced employee work engagement. By doing so, we add to the mindfulness literature by showing that the three essential psychological states are important machanims that link mindfulness to work engagement. Practicially, this research reveals that mindfulness training is an effective tool to influence employees’ psychological states, which ultimately develop their work engagement in the workplace. (shrink)

Despite urgent calls for more research on the integration of business ethics and the meaning of work, to date, there have been few corresponding efforts, and we know surprisingly little about this relationship. In this study, we address this issue by examining when and for whom ethical leadership is more effective in promoting a sense of work meaningfulness among employees, and their subsequent work attitudes. Drawing on the contingency theories of leadership and work meaningfulness (...) literature, we speculate that both employees’ core self-evaluation and perceived organizational support moderate the relationship, but in different ways, and these associations carry over to employees’ subsequent work attitudes in terms of job satisfaction, organizational commitment and turnover intention. We test our hypotheses with two-wave survey data collected from 377 employees. Results indicate that ethical leadership is effective in eliciting work meaningfulness and attitudes for employees higher in CSE or when POS is lower, and ineffective for those lower in CSE or when POS is higher. A supplementary analysis reveals a three-way interaction between ethical leadership, CSE and POS in predicting a sense of work meaningfulness and subsequent work attitudes. Our research cautions that ethical leadership is not a universally positive practice; it can be ineffective or even have a negative impact under some circumstances. (shrink)

Integrating victim precipitation theory with the belongingness perspective of work meaningfulness, this study investigates the interplay among employee perceived overqualification, peer overqualification, and peer ostracism and examines how peer ostracism, in turn, leads to subsequent reduced work meaningfulness. In Study 1, a time-lagged field study of 282 employees, we found that employees who felt overqualified, while working with peers who were less overqualified, experienced more ostracism, which was associated with reduced levels of work meaningfulness. (...) These findings were replicated in Study 2, using time-lagged multi-source data collected from 300 employees working in 51 teams. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings and identify directions for future research. (shrink)

AbstractOrganizations receive multiple benefits when their members act ethically. Of interest in this study is if the actors receive benefits as well, especially as individuals look to work to fulfill psychological and social needs in addition to economic ones. Specifically, we highlight a series of ongoing ethical practices embodied in professional moral courage and their relationship to actor’s work meaningfulness and life well-being. Drawing on self-determination theory and affective events theory, we explore how exercising professional moral courage (...) in one’s work leads to positive work and life outcomes. Data from 106 administrative staff of non-profit organizations demonstrates the positive benefits of adopting ethical practices at work. Specifically, professional moral courage is found to be significantly related to both work meaningfulness and individual eudaimonic life well-being. Our findings note positive benefits for individuals who incorporate professional moral courage into their daily lives and provide support for organizations seeking to encourage it from their employees; benefits for organizations and employees go beyond just the gains from ethical behavior into other positive psychological processes. Implications for future work that considers both the psychological and normative approaches to meaningful work are discussed. (shrink)

This book develops the view that meaningful work is central in human flourishing. The author defends a pluralistic account of what makes work meaningful, arguing that work can be meaningful in virtue of developing capabilities, supporting virtues, providing a purpose, or integrating elements of a worker's life.

Employees remaining silent about ethical aspects of work or organization-related issues, termed employee ethical silence, perpetuates misconduct in today’s business setting. However, how and why it occurs is not yet well specified in the business ethics literature, which is insufficient to manage corporate misconducts. In this research, we investigate how and when exploitative leadership associates with employee ethical silence. We draw from the conservation of resources theory to theorize and test a cognitive resource pathway (i.e., work meaningfulness) (...) and a moral resource pathway (i.e., moral potency) to explain the association between exploitative leadership and employee ethical silence. Results from two studies largely support our hypotheses that work meaningfulness and moral potency mediate the effect of exploitative leadership on ethical silence contingent on performance reward expectancy. Theoretical and practical implications are thoroughly discussed in the paper. (shrink)

The negative interpersonal interaction between customers and platform gig workers has become a problem for platform owners and government. This study investigates the role of negative customer treatment in the context of gig work and its impact on gig workers’ sabotage behavior. A questionnaire survey approach was used in the study, collected three-wave survey data from 258 Chinese gig workers including food-deliver platform workers and app-based ride-hailing drivers. Both effects of the mediation and moderation were tested, all of which (...) find support, using hierarchical multiple regression by SPSS22.0. Results indicate that negative customer treatment can also predict gig workers’ service sabotage through work meaningfulness. Furthermore, positive customer treatment acted as an effective safeguard against the effects of negative customer treatment on employee service sabotage. Trait psychological resilience can also mitigate the effects of a low level of work meaningfulness. The manuscript’s focus provides an interesting angle to the previous research, especially the inclusion of work meaningfulness and trait resilience, on negative customer treatment in the context of gig work. This study contributes to further broaden the perspective of conservation of resource theory for individual intrinsic motivation analysis. Practical implications for platform management and government governance have also been discussed in this manuscript. (shrink)

In liberal political theory, meaningful work is conceptualised as a preference in the market. Although this strategy avoids transgressing liberal neutrality, the subsequent constraint upon state intervention aimed at promoting the social and economic conditions for widespread meaningful work is normatively unsatisfactory. Instead, meaningful work can be understood to be a fundamental human need, which all persons require in order to satisfy their inescapable interests in freedom, autonomy, and dignity. To overcome the inadequate treatment of meaningful (...) class='Hi'>work by liberal political theory, I situate the good of meaningful work within a liberal perfectionist framework, from which standpoint I develop a normative justification for making meaningful work the object of political action. To understand the content of meaningful work, I make use of Susan Wolf’s distinct value of meaningfulness, in which she brings together the dimensions of objectivity and subjectivity into the ‘bipartite value’ of meaningfulness (BVM) (Wolf, Meaning in life and why it matters, 2010). However, in order to be able to incorporate the BVM into our lives, we must become valuers, that is, co-creators of values and meanings. This demands that we acquire the relevant capabilities and status as co-authorities in the realm of value. I conclude that meaningful work is of first importance because it is a fundamental human need, and that society ought to be arranged to allow as many people as possible to experience their work as meaningful through the development of the relevant capabilities. (shrink)

In the human quest for meaning, work occupies a central position. Most adults spend the majority of their waking hours at work, which often serves as a primary source of purpose, belongingness, and identity. In light of these benefits to employees and their organizations, organizational scholars are increasingly interested in understanding the factors that contribute to meaningful work, such as the design of jobs, interpersonal relationships, and organizational missions and cultures. In a separate line of inquiry, scholars (...) of business ethics have examined meaningful work as a moral issue concerning the management of others and ourselves, exploring whether there are definable characteristics of meaningful work to which we have moral rights, and whether there are moral duties to ourselves and others to fulfill those rights. In this article, we examine contemporary developments in both disciplines about the nature, causes, and consequences of meaningful work; we explore linkages between these disciplines; and we offer conclusions and research opportunities regarding the interface of ethical and organizational perspectives on performing and providing meaningful work. (shrink)

A number of paradigms have been proposed to understand the sources of meaningful work, but a non-Western approach has attracted little attention. Because some authors have argued that meaningful work has positive valence that has eudaimonic rather than hedonic content, a virtue-ethics approach to meaningful work has been used. Virtue ethicists acknowledge that our work and places of employment have a profound influence in shaping our character and living a fulfilled life. This study aims to make (...) a theoretical contribution toward an understanding of meaningful work from a virtue-ethics framework that is culturally meaningful and ethically relevant to Filipino realities and their distinct national heritage. It develops a conceptual model for a Filipino view of meaningful work that could guide both researchers and practitioners in business ethics by explaining what makes work meaningful, justifying why this is important, and presenting some examples of concrete measures that management can utilize to promote meaningful work in the Philippine workplace. By integrating Filipino virtues in conceptualizing meaningful work, I believe that a theoretical advancement is made toward a pluralistic and multicultural understanding of the concept, especially through the lens of virtue-ethics. (shrink)

Meaningful work is an important ideal, but it seems hard to give an adequate account of meaningful work. In this article, I conduct a revisionary conceptual analysis of ‘meaningful work’, i.e. a conceptual analysis that aims at finding a better and more useful way to use this term. I argue for a distinction between cases where work itself is meaningful and cases where other sources of meaning are found at work. The term ‘meaningful work’ (...) is most useful for the former cases. I then argue for the reasons account of what makes work itself meaningful: work is meaningful if (and to the extent that) there are good reasons to do it. I compare this to established accounts of meaningful work, such as subjective meaningfulness, self-realization, alienation, the unity of conception and execution, autonomy, social contribution, and Veltman’s four-dimensional account. None of these capture the distinct concern that the concept ‘meaningful work’ should capture, or they do so less well than the reasons account. This also shows that work can be meaningful regardless of whether it is good in other respects, such as in inherent interest or opportunities for self-realization. (shrink)

Global social, ecological and economic crises are contributing to the need for meaningfulness in different spheres of life, including work, as an increasing concern to employees. However, the current understanding of meaningfulness is bound by its normativity and thus does not meet the uncertainty present in today’s work. We utilize the Levinasian concept of “the Other” to provide a non-normative conceptualization of meaningfulness in the context of corporate volunteering (CV) and empirically explore work (...) class='Hi'>meaningfulness in CV projects in Poland and Finland. We find work meaningfulness to arise from proximity to the Other and the otherness of the Other. Our study contributes to the discussion on meaningful work in the fields of business ethics and management studies through a non-normative reconceptualization of meaningfulness. (shrink)

Authors have paid considerable attention to how to define the meaningful work construct. This has led to providing comprehensive definitions in the light of different theoretical frameworks that reflect a degree of contestation within the field. Several of them have proposed definitions linked to the individuals’ pervasive sense of the value of their work. Others have offered descriptions centred on their temporal, episodic nature and emphasising the individual’s occasional work experience. These definitions reflected a potential temporal condition (...) as well as the variety of time perspectives underpinning the authors’ conceptualizations of the construct. This paper conducted a broad literature review to analyse works which have adopted a temporal framework or supported a time-based definition of the construct. The analysis indicates two different conceptualizations of the construct: as a permanent/steady mindset and as a changeable/episodic experience. As a reflective paper, the present contribution develops an overall framework for views and theories on meaningful work. It reports a critical review on the matter to elevate understanding of meaningful work for further research and applied implications in work and organizational studies. (shrink)

The managerial form of university governance has changed the conditions of academic work in many countries. While some academics consider this a welcome development, others experience it as a threat to their autonomy and to the meaningfulness of their work. This essay suggests a stance in response to the current conditions that should serve especially the latter group of academics. The claim is that by approaching academic work as a potential praxis in emergence, it is possible (...) to appreciate local, autonomous activity in renewing academic work. Even if such efforts remain difficult, dispersed in space, discontinuous in time, and incomplete, they may provide a sense of direction and keep up hope. The conception of praxis is a way of articulating the mission of such efforts; simultaneously, it is also a way of defining an epistemic object for research on academic work. (shrink)

Meaningful work refers to the idea that human work is an integral part of the way we think of our lives as going well. The concept is prevalent in sociology and business studies. In philosophy, its discussion tends to revolve around matters of justice and whether the State should take steps to eradicate meaningless work. However, despite the breadth of the recent, general literature, there is little to no discussion about how it is in fact the case (...) that work is meaningful. There is a basic assumption that certain facts about work make it meaningful. After noting the shortcomings in the literature, this essay argues that we can better understand the production of meaning in work by an analogy to speech acts. Using Paul Ricoeur’s theory of action as discourse, one can see how meaning is predicated in the performance of work in ways that are locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary. (shrink)

As automating technologies are increasingly integrated into workplaces, one concern is that many of the human workers who remain will be relegated to more dull and less positively impactful work. This paper considers two rival theories of meaningful work that might be used to evaluate particular implementations of automation. The first is achievementism, which says that work that culminates in achievements to workers’ credit is especially meaningful; the other is the practice view, which says that work (...) that takes the form of an open-ended practice is especially meaningful. Of the two, the practice view is the better tool for assessing the future of meaningful work, because achievementism is explanatorily inadequate in two ways. Moreover, the practice view can explain why the most meaningful forms of work cannot be automated. A procedure can only be automated as long as the steps are defined, whereas, in such work, which steps to take is indefinitely open to redefinition. This reveals the real threat to meaningful work to be a political-economic one. The relevant ethical questions there have to do with how much creative control workers retain in crafting their own jobs, when those jobs involve meaningful work in collaboration with machines; and how to liberate workers from jobs that do not involve meaningful work, which should be left to machines anyway. (shrink)

Any liberal argument for incorporating meaningful work within a theory of justice inherits a burden of proof to show why it does not fall to the objection that privileging the work process valorizes particular ideas about the good and thereby unfairly privileges some persons over others. Existing liberal defences of meaningful work, which rely on the formative effects of work in contemporary economies, have a limited scope of appeal and do not provide a convincing reply to (...) the objection. The paper offers an alternative reply by arguing that meaningful work, understood as a person-engaging social contribution, is intimately connected through reciprocity to the fundamental political idea of society as a system of cooperation between free and equal participating members. This makes the opportunity to engage in meaningful work a social basis of self-respect. (shrink)

As is well known, John Rawls opposes the idea and policy of basic income. However, this paper posits that his view of self-respect and activity could accommodate its implementation. Rawls lists the social basis of self-respect in social primary goods as the most important good, but does not assume that it is derived from wage labor alone. It appears that his theory of justice aims to criticize the work-centered (wage-labor) society and to overcome it. Besides, as Rawls desires, for (...) our work to be meaningful and our life worthwhile, we should institutionalize basic income because it can improve workers’ bargaining power and their attitude toward work, in addition to enhancing their leisure time. In this paper, by considering the normative relationship between meaningful work, worthwhile life, and self-respect from a Rawlsian perspective, I inquire into the potential of basic income in his well-ordered society. (shrink)

Meaningful work is an important but under-represented topic in the business ethics and management curriculum. One definition of meaningful work is that it enables self-realization and service to others while fitting what the market demands. This paper provides an outline for thinking about meaningful work by exploring the evolution of and conclusions from a teaching exercise on meaningful work.

Robots have a history of replacing human labor in undesirable, dirty, dull and dangerous tasks. With robots now emerging in academic and human-centered work, this paper aims to investigate psychological implications of robotizing desirable and socially rewarding work.,Testing the holistic stress model, this study examines educational professionals’ stress responses as mediators between robotization expectations and future optimism in life. The study uses survey data on 2,434 education professionals.,Respondents entertaining robotization expectations perceived their work to be less meaningful (...) and reported more burnout symptoms than those with no robotization expectations. Future optimism about life was not affected by robotization expectations alone, but meaninglessness and burnout symptoms mediated the relation between expectations of robotization and future optimism.,Robotization may be viewed as challenging the meaningfulness of educational work by compromising ethical values and interaction. To prevent excess stress among personnel, robotization should be planned together with employees in co-operation negotiations. This implicates the need for co-designing technological changes in organizations especially in the cases of social use of robots.,Work’s meaningfulness in robotization is a novel research topic and a step toward socially sustainable robotization. (shrink)

This paper argues that two orthodox views of meaningful work—the subjective view and the autonomy view—are deficient. In their place is proposed the contributive view of meaningful work, which is constituted by work that is both complex and involves persons in its contributive aspect. These conditions are necessary due to the way work is inherently tied up with the idea of social contribution and the interdependencies between persons. This gives such features of the contributive view a (...) distinct basis from those found in existent accounts of meaningful work. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:This article deploys Alasdair MacIntyre’s Aristotelian virtue ethics, in which meaningfulness is understood to supervene on human functioning, to bring empirical and ethical accounts of meaningful work into dialogue. Whereas empirical accounts have presented the experience of meaningful work either in terms of agents’ orientation to work or as intrinsic to certain types of work, ethical accounts have largely assumed the latter formulation and subjected it to considerations of distributive justice. This article critiques both the (...) empirical and ethical literatures from the standpoint of MacIntyre’s account of the relationship between the development of virtuous dispositions and participation in work that is productive of goods internal to practices. This reframing suggests new directions for empirical and ethical enquiries. (shrink)

Meaningful work refers to the idea that human work is an integral part of the way we think of our lives as going well. The concept is prevalent in sociology and business studies. In philosophy, its discussion tends to revolve around matters of justice and whether the State should take steps to eradicate meaningless work. However, despite the breadth of the recent, general literature, there is little to no discussion about how it is in fact the case (...) that work is meaningful. There is a basic assumption that certain facts about work make it meaningful. After noting the shortcomings in the literature, this essay argues that we can better understand the production of meaning in work by an analogy to speech acts. Using Paul Ricoeur’s theory of action as discourse, one can see how meaning is predicated in the performance of work in ways that are locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary. (shrink)

If the economy consisted of labor-managed firms, so the workplace is democratic, and in addition the benefits and burdens of economic cooperation were shared equitably and the economy operated efficiently, might there still be a morally compelling case for further intervention into economic arrangements so as to increase the degree to which people gain meaningful or satisfying work? ‘No!’, answers a 1987 essay by the author. This comment argues against that judgment, on the ground that morally required perfectionism or (...) paternalism or simple fairness to the worse off might demand such intervention. It is plausible to hold the good life includes meaningful work, and that what we fundamentally owe one another is a fair distribution of good quality of life. However, this comment also takes issue with Russell Keats’s argument against Arneson in his essay in this issue of this journal. (shrink)

In light of the impact of work on human flourishing, an intractable problem for political theorists concerns the distribution of meaningful work in a community of moral equals. This article reviews a number of partial solutions that a well-ordered society could draw upon to provide equality of opportunity for eudemonistically meaningful work and to minimize the impact of bad work upon those who perform it. Even in view of these solutions, however, it is not likely that (...) opportunities for meaningful work can be guaranteed for all people, which carries an implication that, even in well-ordered societies, it is likely that not all people will flourish. The author argues that the limitedness of meaningful work is not a reason to reject the normative claim that meaningful work is integral in flourishing, nor is it a reason against working to transform social and political institutions to increase opportunities for meaningful work. (shrink)

Recurrent scandals in business ethics demonstrate that work is, on occasion, unambiguously unethical. It is not clear, however, exactly how the concept of ‘meaningful work’ can be applied to such work, and whether, for example, work can be both unethical and meaningful. This article explores three different conceptualisations of meaningful work: where meaningful work is considered to be subjective, primarily subjective but with objective constraints or primarily objective (adopting Alasdair MacIntyre's neo-Aristotelian framework). These competing (...) conceptualisations are examined in relation to the ethical failures in the Australian financial advice industry. From 2009, a range of parliamentary inquiries, including a Royal Commission, documented significant ethical failures at both individual and institutional levels across the industry, which caused substantial hardship to tens of thousands of clients. Among the subsequent reforms was a drive towards the professionalisation of financial advice through enhanced educational standards, a code of ethics and the development of a professional identity. This case demonstrates the different ways in which the conceptualisations of meaningful work can be applied. However, Alasdair MacIntyre's scheme of practices, institutions, internal and external goods is presented as a preferred conceptualisation of the case, accommodating considerations of both ethics and meaningful work and contributing towards a theory of good work in general. (shrink)

The dominant focus of thinking about economic justice is overwhelmingly distributive, that is, concerned with what people get in terms of resources and opportunities. It views work mainly negatively, as a burden or cost, or else is neutral about it, rather than seeing it as a source of meaning and fulfilment—a good in its own right. However, what we do in life has at least as much, if not more, influence on whom we become, as does what we get (...) . Thus we have good reason also to be concerned with what Paul Gomberg has termed contributive justice , that is, justice as regards what people are expected and able to contribute in terms of work. Complex, interesting work allows workers not only to develop and exercise their capacities, and gain the satisfaction from achieving the internal goods of a practice, but to gain the external goods of recognition and esteem. As Gomberg’s analysis of the concept of contributive justice in relation to equality of opportunity shows, as long as the more satisfying kinds of work are concentrated into a subset of jobs, rather than shared out among all jobs, then many workers will be denied the chance to have meaningful work and the recognition that goes with it. In this paper I examine the contributive justice argument, suggest how it can be further strengthened, arguing, inter alia, that ignoring contributive injustice tends to support legitimations of distributive inequality. (shrink)

In general, meaningful work has been conceived to be a matter of institutional obligation and individual choice. In other words, solong as the institution has fulfilled its objective moral obligation to make meaningful work possible, it is up to the subjective volition of the individual to choose or not to choose work that is perceived to be meaningful. However, this conception is incomplete in at least two ways. First, it neglects the role of institutional volition; that is, (...) it does not emphasize enough that the institution’s purpose itself can be meaningful (or meaningless). Second, the standard conception of meaningful work says surprisingly little about the moral obligation of the individual—to anyone but the individual herself—to pursue meaningful work. The immediate and sustained responses to the September 11, 2001, attacks suggest that there is an important relationship between meaningful work and the moral worth of institutions and individuals. To explore that relationship, this paper examines stories of three jobs that tragically coincided on September 11, 2001: broker, firefighter, and terrorist. (shrink)

This paper argues in favor of the _end user thesis_, which holds that the fundamental goal of the firm is to create products and services that provide a benefit to _the people who ultimately use them._ The argument turns on the interest that employees have in work that is meaningful, in the sense that it is an activity worth spending time doing. I argue that a person’s life is diminished to the extent that work constitutes a central feature, (...) but is not meaningful in this way. I argue further that an employee’s work is fully worth doing only if her fundamental aim is to provide a benefit to the people who ultimately use what she produces, and that this is not possible within an organization that aims to maximize profits. The paper concludes by considering arguments that the efficiency gains generated by assigning the firm the goal of profit-maximization justify structuring the firm in a way that does not enable employees to have work that is fully worth doing. (shrink)

This paper affirms the continuing importance of full employment, as the best prospect for most people of the goods of meaningful work and of self-respect, and welcomes the failure of new technology in Western societies to engender mass unemployment, despite predictions to the contrary. It also replies to criticismsfrom John White (in Education and the End of Work) of a previous paper of mine, 'Work and the Human Essence (1984). Employing a different sense of 'meaningful work (...) related to agents major goals in life. White claims that little work is meaningful, or capable of becoming so, and that social policy shouldrecognise this and exonerate most people from expectations of employment. His argument embodies a distinctive understanding of human flourishing, and a critique of my earlier argument from the human essence. This paper defends that argument, plus a separate argument of my earlier paper from self-respect,which White apparently ignores, for meaningful work as crucial to human flourishing. Most employment, I maintain, is capable of being modified so as to become meaningful work, and since this is most peoples best prospect ofthat good, policies of full employment should not be discarded, either in the West or in the Third World. (shrink)

As commonly understood, professional ethics consists of shared duties and episodic dilemmas--the responsibilities incumbent on all members of specific professions joined together with the dilemmas that arise when these responsibilities conflict. Martin challenges this "consensus paradigm" as he rethinks professional ethics to include personal commitments and ideals, of which many are not mandatory. Using specific examples from a wide range of professions, including medicine, law, high school teaching, journalism, engineering, and ministry, he explores how personal commitments motivate, guide, and give (...) meaning to work. (shrink)

Whereas a growing bulk of work has demonstrated that both adults and children are sensitive to frequently occurring word sequences, little is known about the potential role of meaning in the processing of such multiword chunks. Here, we take a first step toward assessing the contribution of meaningfulness in the processing of multiword sequences, using items that varied in chunk meaningfulness. In a phrasal-decision study, we compared reaction times for triads of three-word sequences, corresponding to idiomatic expressions, (...) compositional phrases, and phrasal fragments, while controlling for phrase and substring frequencies. Chunk meaningfulness, as assessed by a separate subjective rating study, was found to speed up decision times for all three types of strings: The more meaningful a multiword sequence was judged to be, the faster it was processed, independently of whether it was idiomatic, compositional in nature, or a phrasal fragment. These results highlight the importance of taking meaning into account when considering the processing of multiword chunks, consistent with predictions of construction-based approaches to language. (shrink)

Research on meaningful work has not embraced a shared definition of what it is, in part because many researchers and laypersons agree that it means different things to different people. However, subjective and social accounts of meaningful work have limited practical value to help people pursue it and to help scholars study it. The account of meaningful work advanced in this paper is inherently normative. It recognizes the relevance of subjective experience and social agreement to appraisals of (...) meaningfulness but considers them conceptually incomplete and practically limited. According to this normative account, meaningful work should be meaningful to oneself and to others and is also meaningful independent of them. It sets forth grounds for evaluating some work to be more meaningful than other work, asserting the possibility that one could be mistaken about the meaningfulness of one’s work. While it thus proscribes some claims to meaningful work, it also opens up potential new avenues of inquiry into, among other things, self-aggrandizing and harmful work that is experienced as meaningful, morally valuable work that is not experienced as meaningful, and the distinction between experienced and normative meaningfulness. (shrink)

The literature on meaningful work often highlights the role of leaders in creating a sense of meaning in the work or tasks that their staff or followers carry out. However, a fundamental question arises about whether or not leaders are morally responsible for providing meaningful work when perceptions of what is meaningful may differ between leaders and followers. Drawing on Buddhist ethics and interviews with thirty-eight leaders in Vietnam who practise ‘engaged Buddhism’ in their leadership, we explore (...) how leaders understand their roles in creating meaningfulness at work and their perceptions of how employees experience their leadership approach in this respect. On the basis of Buddhist ontology on the sense of meaningfulness, we introduce a number of leadership approaches in cultivating meaning at work that question the argument that leaders are primarily responsible for enabling or satisfying employees’ search for meaning. The study provides an alternative lens through which to examine the role of leadership from a Buddhist ethics perspective and shows how an insight from this particular tradition can enrich secular interpretations of meaningful work and leadership. (shrink)

In this article, I present a sociological approach to the problem of meaningful work that dwells on its broad social and cultural sources, as opposed to the focus on subjective and organizational factors currently prevailing in the field. Specifically, I consider two sociological perspectives, those of community and autonomy, as important conceptual tools for understanding the ambivalent character of modern culture in providing individuals with a sense of meaningfulness of their activities. I also review some of the existing (...) research on meaningful work and interpret it through this conceptual distinction, both to show the latter’s relevance for the field and to identify the gaps it might help fill. As a result, based on the sociological perspectives, I propose a general conceptual model and discuss five directions to further advance the theoretical comprehension of meaningful work, and I suggest some implications of these perspectives for normative business ethics. (shrink)

Meaningful work is a key element of positive functioning of employees, but what makes work meaningful? Based on research on self-determination theory, basic psychological needs, and prosocial impact, we suggest that there are four psychological satisfactions that substantially influence work meaningfulness across cultures: autonomy (sense of volition), competence (sense of efficacy), relatedness (sense of caring relationships), and beneficence (sense of making a positive contribution). We test the relationships between these satisfactions and perceived meaningful work in (...) Finland (n = 594, employees of several organizations), India (n = 342, collected through Mturk), and the USA (n = 373, collected through Mturk). Regression analyses show that – except for competence in USA – all four satisfactions are significantly and independently associated with meaningful work. Moreover, structural equation modeling shows that they fully mediated the relationship between occupational position and work meaningfulness in India and in the USA. In sum, the results support the importance of these four satisfactions in explaining the psychological underpinnings of meaningful work. (shrink)

This study adds to the existing literature on meaningful work by offering a cross-cultural perspective. Since work shapes the kind of person that we are and plays an important role in our well-being, some theorists have adopted a virtue theory approach to meaningful work using an Aristotelian-MacIntyrean framework. For lack of a better term, I will call this a western virtue theory. This paper presents a contemporary virtue-focused Buddhist perspective on the topic. While a virtue-ethics interpretation of (...) Buddhism is now widely accepted and has been applied to several issues, not much has been written about meaningful work using a Buddhist-Aristotelian comparative framework. Buddhism is an important cultural component not only of countries that are predominantly Buddhist, but of other societies that have come in contact with it. To develop a Buddhist framework, I draw heavily from the works of Buddhist scholars, particularly in the West who use a virtue framework in interpreting Buddhism. The aims of my essay are dual. The first is to articulate a straightforward application of Buddhism on the contemporary ethical discussion of meaningful work. The second is to discuss the similarities, clarify the differences, and demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses relative to each other of the Buddhist and the Western virtue theory perspectives. In my analysis, I argue that consideration of Buddhist perspective will enable us to construct a cross-cultural, inclusive, and pluralistic conceptual model for the deliberation of meaningful work that complements the Western virtue theory. (shrink)

In this article I use Kantian moral philosophy to develop a concept of meaningful work. Specifically, a Kantian would argue that work is meaningful if (1) it is freely entered into, (2) it allows the worker to exercise her autonomy and independence, (3) it enables the worker to develop her rational capacities, (4) it provides a wage sufficient for physical welfare, (5) it supports the moral development of employees and (6) it is not paternalistic. I then provide examples (...) of contemporary management practices that provide meaningful work in this sense. (shrink)

In psychological and managerial literature, the meaning of work boasts a long tradition; in this topic, scholars and researchers have explored sources of meaning and meaningfulness of the working activity in workers' motivations, values, and beliefs. Less attention, however, is given to the function work has in terms of signifier of each individual's personal identity. This article aims at deeply examining the relationship between identity construction and meaning of work, focusing on this theme through the exploration (...) of Charles Bukowski's narrative world. My attention was particularly focused on representations and emotional connotations characterizing the relationship between identity and work, deduced by the content analysis of his literary production. Bukowski's difficult working experience sustainability intersects with the instability scenario of the second postwar period in the United States, recursively affecting the development of a self-reflexive thought around which an idea of oneself could be modeled. In this sense, the author's experience is paradigmatic for the contemporary condition, in so far as today's work experience, deprived of a shared meaning system, negatively influences the meaning attribution process involving one's own life experiences. (shrink)

The interest in meaningful work has significantly increased over the last two decades. Much of the associated managerial research has focused on researching ways to 'provide and manage meaning' through leadership or organizational culture. This stands in sharp contrast with the literature of the humanities which suggests that meaningfulness does not need to be provided, as the distinct feature of a human being is that he or she has an intrinsic 'will to meaning'. The research that has been (...) done based on the humanistic paradigm has been quite fragmented. This article aims to address these gaps through an action research project that actively involved participants in the process of affirming and uncovering the meaningfulness of their work. Our findings contribute to current organizational scholarship and practice as they enable scholars to clearly distinguish 'meaningful work' from 'the management of meaning', bring together the various sources of meaningful work in one framework and show their relationship with each other, clearly show the importance of engaging with both the inspiration towards the ideal as well as the often less than perfect self and the organizational reality in which meaning gets expressed and contribute to our understanding of how to engage individuals in conversations about meaningful work that are not prescriptive or exclusive, but that also show where meanings are commonly held. (shrink)

This research on the ethics of meaningful work examined how types of job-related harm and their magnitude of consequences influenced components of ethical decision-making. The research also investigated the moderating effects of individual differences on the relation between the MOC and the ethical decision-making elements for each type of harm. Using a sample of 185 Chinese professionals, a between-subjects, fully crossed experimental scenario design revealed that physical and economic job-related harm were recognized as moral issues to a greater extent (...) than cognitive or emotional harm. Second, physical job-related harm stimulated a higher level of moral evaluations than economic and cognitive harm. Third, individuals intended to act ethically when MOC was high versus low. Finally, experience with layoffs and IMO helped explain the relations between MOC and moral evaluations for economic and cognitive job-related harm, respectively. Implications for research and management are discussed. (shrink)