Fostering and Maintaining Meaningful Work: The Role of Social Context

Abstract

In recent years, research on meaningful work has expanded by scholars from diverse research fields, studying which factors contribute to employees experiencing their work as meaningful. While these research efforts are valuable, they tend to focus on the role of job design while paying less attention to the role of social context (e.g., relationships and connections inside and outside work) in fostering and maintaining meaningful work, resulting in this knowledge being limited. To address this shortcoming, this symposium brings together an internationally-diverse group of scholars to engage in conversation about the role of social context in fostering and maintaining experiences of meaningful work. This symposium includes five presentations followed by a discussion. Two of the papers deal with the role of social context in understanding how individuals justify or subjectively perceive why their work is meaningful. The other two papers examine how positive relationships at work and particularly in one’s team can help to maintain experiences of meaningful work in meaningfulness-harming and challenging organizational situations. The last paper explores how workers in meaningful occupations relate to their clients depending on the different institutional roles that they adopt. With this symposium we aim to a) contribute to the understanding of social context as a source of perceiving and justifying one’s work as meaningful, b) show the importance of social context for maintaining experiences of meaningful work in harmful and challenging organizational situations, c) broaden the understanding of the influence of social context on meaningful work from the predominantly studied colleagues and leaders to teams, clients, and significant others, and d) develop new avenues and possibilities for future research in this field. Negotiating Balance, Purpose and Legitimacy in Narratives of Worthy Work Presenter: Adrian Madden; U. of Huddersfield Presenter: Catherine Bailey; King's College London Presenter: Marjolein Lips-Wiersma; AUT U. Family Recognition as a Source of Meaningful Work Presenter: Seonyoung Hwang; Aalto U. School of Business Presenter: Evgenia Lysova; Vrije U. Amsterdam Presenter: Yiluyi Zeng; School of Business and Management, Royal Holloway, U. of London, UK I Know How You Can Help Me!: The Role of Others in Maintaining Experiences of Meaningful Work Presenter: Evgenia Lysova; Vrije U. Amsterdam Presenter: Claire Schulze Schleithoff; Vrije U. Amsterdam, School of Business and Economics Experiencing Meaningful Work During COVID-19: The Role of Team Holding Behaviors Presenter: Josine L. Janssen; Vrije U. Amsterdam Presenter: Anna Dekker; Hogeschool Leiden When (Falsely Perceiving) Power is Liability: Burnout and Meaningful Work among Frontline Workers Presenter: Carrie Oelberger; U. of Minnesota