Coetic

Meaningful Work & Purpose-Driven Jobs

Published: 2017-10-09

Meaningful work. What makes it happen? What happens when people experience it? Here’s what the research says…

Work is meaningful when it connects to our deepest values, needs, and goals.

Meaningful work is subjective. Two people can be experiencing highly meaningful work in completely different jobs. Two people in the same job can find the work meaningful for completely different reasons.

We each have unique values, needs, and goals. And these change and evolve over our lives. Although doing work that helps others is a common path to meaningfulness, it’s not the only one. People can find meaning in many aspects of work (like learning, or solving problems)11,13,16.

Listen to an interview with Swarthmore College’s Dr. Barry Schwartz --- How Can a Monotonous Job Be Meaningful?

When we find meaningful work, we do our best work.

When work is meaningful, we are inspired to:

Work meaningfulness is not the same as engagement or motivation.

Work meaningfulness is a distinct construct. It behaves differently from intrinsic motivation, work engagement, and job satisfaction.

For example, it’s possible to be satisfied with a job you don’t find especially meaningful (e.g., because the pay and benefits are favorable). It’s also possible to be unhappy in job you find meaningful (e.g., because of long working hours or limited resources, such as with a zookeeper who endures difficult working circumstances for the sake of caring for the animals)2,3,20.

It’s possible to design a job to be more meaningful, but meaningful work is still personal.

Some job characteristics have a high potential to elicit a sense of meaning at work…

  1. A compelling mission that’s clearly stated and woven into the daily activities and policies of the organization (i.e., helps people frame work toward a purpose)
  2. Opportunities and encouragement for each person to employ many unique skills and talents (i.e., maximize self-expression)
  3. Responsibility ‘ownership’ by individual employees, so that each person contributes an important and complete piece (i.e., worthwhile tasks)
  4. A vivid, felt connection between the work itself and the difference it makes in the lives or work of others, potentially including frequent contact with the beneficiaries of the work (i.e., clear impact).
  5. A transformational leader (or leadership team) who inspires people toward a grand vision (i.e., a new reality the work is shaping).

However, it’s also possible for somebody to work in a job that has many of these characteristics and not find it meaningful. Remember point #1—ultimately what a person finds meaningful is highly personal. That’s why person-organization and person-job fit are important7,8,10.

For some people science brought to life, listen to stories about the meaningful work people are doing on Slack’s podcast Work In Progress.

People think of work as either a job, a career, or a calling.

When we think about work, we can place its meaning in different ways…

In any of these orientations, it is possible to experience high job satisfaction and engagement. But a calling orientation especially links to higher meaningfulness, self-efficacy, and work engagement9,20.

Hear Yale University researcher Dr. Amy Wrzesniewski talk about her work on callings and job crafting on Hidden Brain’s You 2.0: Dream Jobs episode.

Unanswered callings can drive work behavior.

A calling is a type of work that you feel strongly drawn to. The word “calling” is often associated with the religious notion of being “called by God to do this work,” but also describes work that feels like a profoundly perfect personal fit.

A missed or unanswered calling is a sense that current work is not fulfilling, or only partially fulfilling, an important connection between work and identity.

We often attempt to steer our work and/or leisure time to fill unanswered callings. This can mean crafting a job to match what is uniquely meaningful to us, making commitments to contribute beyond work responsibilities inside or outside the organization, or searching for a new job1,5,6,9.

The desire for work meaningfulness is not exclusive to the millennial generation.

There’s a popular myth that the millennial generation seeks meaningful work above money.

Research does not support this. According to research, young people of every generation have wanted meaningfulness in work. And in general, people of all ages and generations would like work to be meaningful.

While it’s tempting to stereotype generations, the stereotypes rarely outweigh individual variability4,14,15,18.

People can create meaning in any job.

If given sufficient autonomy, a person will often re-shape a job in the direction of personal interests and passions. This is called job crafting.

Specifically, task crafting is when a person modifies and tailors job tasks (e.g., by volunteering for personally interesting projects, or specializing in job content that matches a personal passion).

Cognitive crafting (also called “meaning-making”) is when a person reframes thoughts about the work (i.e., by reframing the job as more related to a personal calling than it might seem at first).

Organizational leaders and managers can play an important role in shaping meaningful jobs (as described above), and also in provoking people to explore job crafting, task crafting, and cognitive crafting to find more personal meaning in work1,17,19.

Hear Dr. Robert Quinn’s stories of what happens when we become purpose-seeking in our lives and work, and how resourceful we become when embracing a meaningful purpose:

References

  1. Berg, J. M., Grant, A. M., & Johnson, V. (2010). When callings are calling: Crafting work and leisure in pursuit of unanswered occupational callings. Organization Science, 21(5), 973–994. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.1090.0497
  2. Bunderson, J. S., & Thompson, J. A. (2009). The call of the wild: Zookeepers, callings, and the double-edged sword of deeply meaningful work. Administrative Science Quarterly, 54(1), 32–57. https://doi.org/10.2189/asqu.2009.54.1.32
  3. Chalofsky, N., & Krishna, V. (2009). Meaningfulness, commitment, and engagement: The intersection of a deeper level of intrinsic motivation. Advances in Developing Human Resources, 11(2), 189–203. https://doi.org/10.1177/1523422309333147
  4. Deal, J. J., Altman, D. G., & Rogelberg, S. G. (2010). Millennials at work: What we know and what we need to do (if anything). Journal of Business and Psychology, 25(2), 191–199. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-010-9177-2
  5. Dik, B. J., Duffy, R. D., & Eldridge, B. M. (2009). Calling and vocation in career counseling: Recommendations for promoting meaningful work. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 40(6), 625–632. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0015547
  6. Duffy, R. D., & Sedlacek, W. E. (2007). The presence of and search for a calling: Connections to career development. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 70(3), 590–601. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2007.03.007
  7. Grant, A. M. (2007). Relational job design and the motivation to make a prosocial difference. Academy of Management Review, 32(2), 393–417. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2007.24351328
  8. Hackman, J. R., & Oldham, G. R. (1976). Motivation through the design of work: Test of a theory. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 16(2), 250–279. https://doi.org/10.1016/0030-5073(76)90016-7
  9. Hirschi, A. (2012). Callings and work engagement: Moderated mediation model of work meaningfulness, occupational identity, and occupational self-efficacy. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 59(3), 479–485. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0028949
  10. Lepisto, D. A., & Pratt, M. G. (2017). Meaningful work as realization and justification: Toward a dual conceptualization. Organizational Psychology Review, 7(2), 99–121. https://doi.org/10.1177/2041386616630039
  11. Lips-Wiersma, M., & Wright, S. (2012). Measuring the meaning of meaningful work: Development and validation of the comprehensive meaningful work scale (CMWS). Group & Organization Management, 37(5). https://doi.org/10.1177/1059601112461578
  12. Morgeson, F. P., & Humphrey, S. E. (2006). The work design questionnaire (WDQ): Developing and validating a comprehensive measure for assessing job design and the nature of work. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91(6), 1321–1339. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.91.6.1321
  13. Morrison, M. A., Walker, R., & DeShon, R. P. (2016). Toward a comprehensive definition of work meaningfulness. Society for Industrial-Organizational Psychology, Orlando, Florida.
  14. Ng, E. S. W., Schweitzer, L., & Lyons, S. T. (2010). New generation, great expectations: A field study of the millennial generation. Journal of Business and Psychology, 25(2), 281–292. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-010-9159-4
  15. Rawlins, C., Indvik, J., & Johnson, P. (2011). Understanding the new generation: What the millennial cohort absolutely, positively must have at work. IEEE Engineering Management Review, 39(2), 56–60. https://doi.org/10.1109/EMR.2011.5876176
  16. Rosso, B. D., Dekas, K. H., & Wrzesniewski, A. (2010). On the meaning of work: A theoretical integration and review. Research in Organizational Behavior, 30, 91–127. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.riob.2010.09.001
  17. Tims, M., Derks, D., & Bakker, A. B. (2016). Job crafting and its relationships with person–job fit and meaningfulness: A three-wave study. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 92, 44–53. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2015.11.007
  18. Twenge, J. M., Campbell, W. K., & Freeman, E. C. (2012). Generational differences in young adults’ life goals, concern for others, and civic orientation, 1966–2009. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102(5), 1045–1062. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0027408
  19. Wrzesniewski, A., LoBuglio, N., Dutton, J. E., & Berg, J. M. (2013). Job crafting and cultivating positive meaning and identity in work. In A. B. Bakker (Ed.), Advances in Positive Organizational Psychology (Vol. 1, pp. 281–302). Emerald Group Publishing Limited. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2046-410X(2013)0000001015
  20. Wrzesniewski, A., McCauley, C., Rozin, P., & Schwartz, B. (1997). Jobs, careers, and callings: People’s relations to their work. Journal of Research in Personality, 31(1), 21–33. https://doi.org/10.1006/jrpe.1997.2162