We believe that for the human spirit to thrive at work,
individuals must be able to completely immerse themselves in their
work. That is, they must be able to engage the cognitive, emotional
and physical dimensions of themselves in their work. Thus, we began
this research project with a passion to understand why some
individuals engage their selves in their work, whereas others
become alienated and disengage from their work.
Importance of engagement
Engagement is important for managers to cultivate given that
disengagement, oralienation, is central to the problem of workers
lack of commitment and motivation (Aktouf, 1992). Meaningless work
is often associated with apathy and detachment from ones work (cf.
Thomas & Velthouse, 1990). In such conditions, individuals are
thought to be estranged from their selves (Seeman, 1972) and
restoration of meaning in work is seen as a method to foster an
employees motivation and attachment to work. These views
demonstrate both the humanistic and practical reasons for providing
meaningful work to individuals personal fulfilment and motivational
qualities of such work. Indeed, much of the recent literature on
empowerment and employee involvement focuses on providing
meaningful work to employees to facilitate both their motivation
and personal growth (cf. Spreitzer, Kizilos, & Nason,
1997).
Psychological meaningfulness
The psychological condition of experienced meaningfulness has
been recognized by researchers as an important psychological state
or condition at work (e.g., Hackman & Oldham, 1980; May, 2003).
Indeed, Frankl (1992) has argued that individuals have a primary
motive to seek meaning in their work. Meaningfulness is defined
here as the value of a work goal or purpose, judged in relation to
an individuals own ideals or standards (Hackman & Oldham, 1980;
May, 2003; Renn & Vandenberg, 1995). Lack of meaning in ones
work can lead to alienation or disengagement from ones work
(Aktouf, 1992). The provision of work that is experienced as
meaningful by employees should facilitate both their personal
growth and their work motivation (Spreitzer et al., 1997). We
explore here the theoretical and empirical foundations of the
workplace dimensions theorized to influence psychological
meaningfulness, namely, job enrichment, work role fit and co-worker
relations.
Hypothesis 1a: Job enrichment will be positively related to
psychological meaningfulness.Hypothesis 1b: Work role will be
positively related to psychological meaningfulness.Hypothesis 1c:
Co-worker relations will be positively related to psychological
meaningfulness.
Hypothesis 4a: Psychological meaningfulness will be positively
related to engagement at work.Hypothesis 5a: Experienced
meaningfulness will mediate the relation between its determinants
(i.e. job enrichment, work role fit and co-worker relations) and
engagement at work.
Psychological meaningfulnessSix items (a =.90) drawn from
Spreitzer (1995) and May (2003) measured the degree of meaning that
individuals discovered in their work-related activities.
Discussion
The findings of this study contribute to our understanding of
the psychological conditions that relate to individuals engagement
at work. The results associated with the investigation of the
original theoretical model suggest that psychological
meaningfulness and safety were positively linked to employees
investment in their work roles.
Job enrichment and work role fit were positively associated with
psychological meaningfulness.
Mediation analyses demonstrated that meaningfulness fully
mediated the effects of both job enrichment and work role fit on
engagement. The relationship between co-worker norms and engagement
was only partially mediated by psychological safety.
DISCUSSION
The goal of this study was to investigate how meaningfulness at
work and meaningfulness in working pave the way for creativity
through identification and positive experiences at work. Overall,
the results of this study indicate that both forms of
meaningfulness (in and at work) are associated with organizational
identification, and that people who identify with their
organization also experience positive psychological states, which,
in turn, result in enhanced employee creativity.
INTRODUCTION
Many psychologists have argued that deriving meaning from life
experiences is essential for psychological health (e.g. King,
Hicks, Krull, & Del Gaiso, 2006; Ryff & Singer, 1998), yet
surprisingly little is known about how people do this. One
perspective has drawn attention to the specific sources of meaning
people identify in their lives. For example, some people feel that
raising their children, volunteering at a hospital, or being good
at their work gives them a sense of meaningfulness that pervades
the rest of their lives. It may be that experiences that impact
these sources of meaning have particular importance for peoples
judgments of the meaning they experience in their lives as a whole
(Krause, 2004). Sources of meaning are typically categorised into
important domains of meaning (e.g. Prager, 1998), and whatever
enhances or erodes peoples experiences in those domains may, in
turn, enhance or erode the amount of meaning people experience in
their lives as a whole. Examining meaning in specific life domains
therefore holds promise for understanding the origins of peoples
perceived meaning in life. In the present study, we examined how
peoples experiencing of meaning in life and also their dedication
to seeking meaningwas related to experiencing and seeking meaning
in the career domain.Research on meaning in life has established
that how much people experience meaning is fairly independent of
how dedicated they are in seeking meaning (e.g. Steger, in press).
The experiencing dimension concerns peoples perceptions of the
presence of meaning in their lives. Presence of meaning has been
defined as the extent to which people feel their lives matter and
make sense to them on a subjective level (King et al., 2006). The
motivational dimension concerns the degree to which people seek
meaning in life. This search for meaning has been defined as the
strength with which people are trying to establish and/or augment
their sense of whether their lives matter and make sense to them
(Steger, in press). The relation between seeking and experiencing
meaning is complex. Factor analytic and multitraitmultimethod
matrix evidence suggest that search for meaning and presence of
meaning are distinguishable, both contemporaneously and
longitudinally (e.g. Steger, Frazier, Oishi, & Kaler, 2006;
Steger & Kashdan, 2007). Although people searching for meaning
might generally be expected to find it, evidence from the most
comprehensive investigation of this relation to date has suggested
that deficits in meaning spark people to search for meaning
(Steger, Kashdan, Sullivan, & Lorentz, 2008). Hence, it is not
clear under which circumstances searching for meaning might lead to
experiencing more meaning. Just as people may experience meaning on
both global and domainspecific levels, they may seek meaning on
both levels as well. For example, people lacking meaning in life in
general might seek meaning in their career pursuits. This
questionwhether people seeking meaning in life can be satisfied (in
terms of higher well-being) by experiencing meaning in their
careers, or vice versais the centerpiece of the present
studies.
GENERAL DISCUSSION
We argued that meaning matters to peoples well-being, whether
that meaning is experienced in specific life domains or in a
persons life as a whole, and further that relations among
domain-specific and global meaning are important to understanding
the origins of meaning. Taken together, the two studies described
here contribute to the literature showing that peoples career
attitudes are broadly related to their overall well-being. People
who approached their careers as a calling reported greater meaning
in life, life satisfaction, and career decision-making efficacy,
and fewer depressive symptoms than those who did not approach their
work as a calling. As a reflection of career-related meaning,
calling demonstrated a similar pattern of relations with these
variables as meaning in life did, and the dynamic between the two
levels of meaning warrants further empirical and theoretical
investigation.
Mission and vision
