Meaningful

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, or
alienation, is central to the problem of workers’ lack of commitment and
motivation (Aktouf, 1992). Meaningless work is often associated with apathy and
detachment from one’s 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 employee’s
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 individual’s own ideals or standards (Hackman & Oldham, 1980;
May, 2003; Renn & Vandenberg, 1995). Lack of meaning in one’s work can lead
to alienation or ‘disengagement’ from one’s 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 meaningfulness
Six 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 people’s
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 people’s
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
people’s perceived meaning in life. In the present study, we examined how
people’s experiencing of meaning in life— and also their dedication to seeking
meaning—was 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 people’s 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 question—whether people seeking meaning in life
can be satisfied (in terms of higher well-being) by experiencing meaning in their
careers, or vice versa—is the centerpiece of the present studies.

GENERAL DISCUSSION

We argued that meaning matters to people’s well-being, whether that meaning is
experienced in specific life domains or in a person’s 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 people’s 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