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Meaningful Work is Healthy Work
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The dimensionality of Maslach's (1982) 3 aspects of job burnout—emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment—was examined among a sample of supervisors and managers in the human services. A series of confirmatory factor analyses supported the 3-factor model, with the first 2 aspects highly correlated. The 3 aspects were found to be differentially related to other variables reflecting aspects of strain, stress coping, and self-efficacy in predictable and meaningful ways. Implications for better understanding the burnout process are discussed.
Studied personality as a conditioner of the effects of stressful life events on illness onset. Two groups of middle- and upper-level 40-49 yr old executives had comparably high degrees of stressful life events in the previous 3 yrs, as measured by the Schedule of Recent Events. One group of 86 Ss suffered high stress without falling ill, whereas the other group of 75 Ss reported becoming sick after their encounter with stressful life events. Illness was measured by the Seriousness of Illness Survey (A. R. Wyler et al 1970). Discriminant function analysis, run on half of the Ss in each group and cross-validated on the remaining cases, supported the prediction that high stress/low illness executives show, by comparison with high stress/high illness executives, more hardiness, that is, have a stronger commitment to self, an attitude of vigorousness toward the environment, a sense of meaningfulness, and an internal locus of control. (43 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).
We review the literature on work as meaning and propose a theoretical model of factors that support engagement in meaningful work. We argue that meaningful work arises when people have a clear sense of self, an accurate understanding of the nature and expectations of their work environment, and understand how to transact with their organizations to accomplish their work objectives. We argue that this comprehension of the self in work provides the foundation for people to develop a sense of purpose and mission about their work that both motivates their engagement and performance and helps them transcend their own immediate interests to achieve concern for their contributions to their organization and the greater good. We describe potential and documented benefits of meaningful work to individuals and organizations and provide some suggestions for practical applications and future research.
We theorize that engagement, conceptualized as the investment of an individual's complete self into a role, provides a more comprehensive explanation of relationships with performance than do well-known concepts that reflect narrower aspects of the individual's self. Results of a study of 245 firefighters and their supervisors supported our hypotheses that engagement mediates relationships between value congruence, perceived organizational support, and core self-evaluations, and two job performance dimensions: task performance and organizational citizenship behavior. Job involvement, job satisfaction, and intrinsic motivation were included as mediators but did not exceed engagement in explaining relationships among the antecedents and performance outcomes.
In this article, the author describes a new theoretical perspective on positive emotions and situates this new perspective within the emerging field of positive psychology. The broaden-and-build theory posits that experiences of positive emotions broaden people's momentary thought-action repertoires, which in turn serves to build their enduring personal resources, ranging from physical and intellectual resources to social and psychological resources. Preliminary empirical evidence supporting the broaden-and-build theory is reviewed, and open empirical questions that remain to be tested are identified. The theory and findings suggest that the capacity to experience positive emotions may be a fundamental human strength central to the study of human flourishing.
http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=search.displayRecord&UID=1998-06124-006
Developed a taxonomy of job design approaches from the literature, including (1) a motivational approach from organizational psychology, (2) a mechanistic approach from classic industrial engineering, (3) a biological approach from work physiology and biomechanics, and (4) a perceptual/motor approach from experimental psychology. The Multimethod Job Design Questionnaire (MJDQ) was developed reflecting these approaches. A corresponding taxonomy of job outcomes was developed, and hypotheses were generated about relationships between job design approaches and outcomes. A field study of 121 jobs, 215 19–63 yr old job incumbents, and 23 27–58 yr old supervisors was conducted using this instrument. Results show that the MJDQ was reliable and that most hypotheses were supported. Jobs that scored high on the Motivational subscale had employees who were more satisfied and motivated, rated higher on job performance, and exhibited less absenteeism. Jobs high on the Mechanistic subscale had higher utilization levels and lower training requirements. Jobs high on the Biological scale required less physical effort, produced fewer aches and pains, and resulted in fewer medical incidents. Jobs high on the Perceptual/Motor scale were less likely to produce accidents, errors, stress, and work overload and required fewer mental demands. Sample items are appended. (113 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The aim of this research is to examine severaldimensions of nonwork domains such as nonwork-to-workspillover, work/nonwork conflict, coping strategies, andorganizational support for nonwork, and their relationship to withdrawal cognitions.Questionnaires were mailed to all employees of a schooldistrict in western Canada. A total of 300 usablequestionnaires were returned: a response rate of 42%. The findings show that nonwork domain variables aresignificantly related to withdrawal cognitions. This wasdemonstrated mainly in two strong interaction effectsbetween the importance of nonwork and personal coping strategies on the one hand, and betweenthe importance of nonwork and perceived organizationalsupport for nonwork on the other. The two interactionsremain significant when two work variables, i.e., organizational commitment and job satisfaction,were entered into the regression as control variables.The paper concludes with proposed directions for futureresearch based on the findings of this present work.
The key features which influence mental health both in jobs and unemployment are brought together within a single perspective. Three principal axes of affective well-being are identified as warranting investigation, and it is suggested that nine environmental features are of primary importance. The impact of these features on mental health is viewed as analogous to the influence of vitamins on physical health, with an explicit non-linearity in the relationship. This ‘vitamin model’ is extended to permit examination of individual differences (for example, in terms of baseline values and specific matching characteristics), and empirical evidence is summarized. It is concluded from previous research that job features do not interact synergistically in relation to employee well-being, although this possibility may not yet have been adequately tested. The framework is suggested to be adequately comprehensive, but, as is the case with other models, it requires development in respect of the specific mechanisms operating between environmental features and mental health.
The personal project is proposed as a new unit of analysis for the study of personality in its social, physical and temporal context. A sequential model of personal projects is proposed in which the major stages of project inception, planning, action, and termination are described in detail and related to dimensions of individual differences. A new methodology for assessing personal project content and structure is introduced, including techniques for assessing interproject impact and linkages with values and actions. The relevance of a projectanalytic approach to recent issues in environmental psychology is discussed. It is proposed that personal projects methodology might serve as a coupling device between the fields of personality and environmental psychology.
Psychology after World War II became a science largely devoted to healing. It concentrated on repairing damage using a disease model of human functioning. This almost exclusive attention to pathology neglected the idea of a fulfilled individual and a thriving community, and it neglected the possibility that building strength is the most potent weapon in the arsenal of therapy. The aim of positive psychology is to catalyze a change in psychology from a preoccupation only with repairing the worst things in life to also building the best qualities in life. To redress the previous imbalance, we must bring the building of strength to the forefront in the treatment and prevention of mental illness.
Empirical research in organizational psychology has generally failed to support the popular notion that happy employees are also productive employees. This study examined the relationship of state and dispositional measures of affect to performance ratings. Results showed that dispositional but not state affect was a significant predictor of subsequent performance.
Background:
While depression is known to involve a disturbance of mood, movement and cognition, its associated cognitive deficits are frequently viewed as simple epiphenomena of the disorder.
Aims:
To review the status of cognitive deficits in depression and their putative neurobiological underpinnings.
Method:
Selective computerised review of the literature examining cognitive deficits in depression and their brain correlates.
Results:
Recent studies report both mnemonic deficits and the presence of executive impairment--possibly selective for set-shifting tasks--in depression. Many studies suggest that these occur independent of age, depression severity and subtype, task 'difficulty', motivation and response bias: some persist upon clinical 'recovery'.
Conclusions:
Mnemonic and executive deficits do no appear to be epiphenomena of depressive disorder. A focus on the interactions between motivation, affect and cognitive function may allow greater understanding of the interplay between key aspects of the dorsal and ventral aspects of the prefrontal cortex in depression.
This article examines assessment approaches and specific measures used by job-stress researchers to characterize aspects of work and the working environment (potential job stressors) and workers' reactions to these working conditions (strains). Self-report instruments, observational approaches, and physiological indicators are described. Problematic areas (e.g., the use of overlapping stressor and strain measures) and contemporary issues affecting job stress assessment (e.g., negative affectivity) are discussed. Recommendations regarding instrument selection and measurement improvements are offered. It is concluded that closer attention to measurement-related issues is critical to the advancement of knowledge in the field. Important needs include the identification and more frequent use of objective measures, the increased use of triangulation strategies, and a careful examination of the adequacy of existing constructs and measures for capturing the demands of contemporary work. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Examination of data from nationwide public opinion surveys from 1972 through 1993 indicated no decrease across occupations, sex, or race within the US samples, but a decrease in sense of satisfaction with work.
This study began with the premise that people can use varying degrees of their selves. physically. cognitively. and emotionally. in work role performances. which has implications for both their work and experi ences. Two qualitative. theory-generating studies of summer camp counselors and members of an architecture firm were conducted to explore the conditions at work in which people personally engage. or express and employ their personal selves. and disengage. or withdraw and defend their personal selves. This article describes and illustrates three psychological conditions-meaningfulness. safety. and availabil ity-and their individual and contextual sources. These psychological conditions are linked to existing theoretical concepts. and directions for future research are described. People occupy roles at work; they are the occupants of the houses that roles provide. These events are relatively well understood; researchers have focused on "role sending" and "receiving" (Katz & Kahn. 1978). role sets (Merton. 1957). role taking and socialization (Van Maanen. 1976), and on how people and their roles shape each other (Graen. 1976). Researchers have given less attention to how people occupy roles to varying degrees-to how fully they are psychologically present during particular moments of role performances. People can use varying degrees of their selves. physically, cognitively, and emotionally. in the roles they perform. even as they main tain the integrity of the boundaries between who they are and the roles they occupy. Presumably, the more people draw on their selves to perform their roles within those boundaries. the more stirring are their performances and the more content they are with the fit of the costumes they don. The research reported here was designed to generate a theoretical frame work within which to understand these "self-in-role" processes and to sug gest directions for future research. My specific concern was the moments in which people bring themselves into or remove themselves from particular task behaviors, My guiding assumption was that people are constantly bring ing in and leaving out various depths of their selves during the course of The guidance and support of David Berg, Richard Hackman, and Seymour Sarason in the research described here are gratefully acknowledged. I also greatly appreciated the personal engagements of this journal's two anonymous reviewers in their roles, as well as the comments on an earlier draft of Tim Hall, Kathy Kram, and Vicky Parker.
In this article, the author describes a new theoretical perspective on positive emotions and situates this new perspective within the emerging field of positive psychology. The broaden-and-build theory posits that experiences of positive emotions broaden people's momentary thought-action repertoires, which in turn serves to build their enduring personal resources, ranging from physical and intellectual resources to social and psychological resources. Preliminary empirical evidence supporting the broaden-and-build theory is reviewed, and open empirical questions that remain to be tested are identified. The theory and findings suggest that the capacity to experience positive emotions may be a fundamental human strength central to the study of human flourishing.
Senior executives routinely undermine creativity, productivity, and commitment by damaging the inner work lives of their employees in four avoidable ways. As a senior executive, you may think you know what Job Number 1 is: developing a killer strategy. In fact, this is only Job 1a. You have a second, equally important task. Call it Job 1b: enabling the ongoing engagement and everyday progress of the people in the trenches of your organization who strive to execute that strategy. A multiyear research project whose results we described in our recent book, The Progress Principle, 1 found that of all the events that can deeply engage people in their jobs, the single most important is making progress in meaningful work. Even incremental steps forward—small wins—boost what we call "inner work life": the constant flow of emotions, motivations, and perceptions that constitute a person's reactions to the events of the work day. Beyond affecting the well-being of employees, inner work life affects the bottom 2 line. 2 People are more creative, productive, committed, and collegial in their jobs when they have positive inner work lives. But it's not just any sort of progress in work that matters. The first, and fundamental, requirement is that the work be meaningful to the people doing it. In our book and a recent Harvard Business Review article, 3 we argue that managers at all levels routinely—and unwittingly—undermine the meaningful-ness of work for their direct subordinates through everyday words and actions. These include dismissing the importance of subordinates' work or ideas, destroying a sense of ownership by switching people off project teams before work is finalized, shifting goals so frequently that people despair that their work will ever see the light of day, and neglecting to keep subor-dinates up to date on changing priorities for customers. But what about a company's most senior leaders? What is their role in making—or killing—meaning at work? To be sure, as a high-level leader, you have fewer opportunities to directly affect the inner work lives of employ-ees than do frontline supervisors. Yet your smallest actions pack a wallop because what you say and do is intensely observed by people down the line. 4 A sense of purpose in the work, and consistent action to reinforce it, has to come from the top.
Continuous changes in both the economy and technology, as well as changes in the speed of change, suggest that managers who lead modern organizations need to be engaged in a constant learning process. Although much executive education focuses on technical and financial issues, we believe that the big mistakes in careers and organizations result from a lack of knowledge of a different kind-from gaps in self-awareness. We review executive education with three goals in mind. First, to define some key terms associated with learning and education that are often left unspecified. Second, to propose a taxonomy of learning outcomes associated with self-knowledge: the taxonomy is exhaustive in that it can account for all existing competency models. And third, to suggest that executive education will proceed most efficiently and productively when it is preceded by an assessment of the executives' capabilities, relative to their role responsibilities (present and future) and the organizational culture in which they work.
The problem and the solution. This concluding article presents a praxis-based reflection on the applied role of work meaning, its academic research, and the articles presented in this issue. Focusing on issues of convergence and divergence of meaning and the organizational leadership challenges in a global economic and business environment, the article addresses meaning of working issues in human resource development (HRD) and talent management practice. It further explains the role of meaning of working as an important component of professional development in HRD and identifies areas for further research and scholarship.
The problem and the solution. The article uses three broad historical eras, preindustrial, industrial, and postindustrial, to investigate similarities and differences in the meaning of working in three countries: Germany, South Korea, and the United States of America. Based on the proposition of meaning as created in an interplay between the individual and the social environment, attention is paid to work as a social institution, and the characteristics of work processes, technologies, and organizations are described. The conclusion identifies common and divergent themes and argues for the importance of historical perspectives for the education and training of human resource development practitioners and the utility of a historical and comparative approach to understanding the meaning of working. Directions for further research are offered at the conclusion of the article.
The problem and the solution. This article situates the topic of the meaning of work and working in the broader context of social science research and theory and develops a rationale for its importance for the theory and practice of human resource development. Some of the themes, anchoring the content of the following articles, are related to issues of levels of analysis in the research on meaning of working; the need for the integration of different disciplinary traditions (historical, sociological, psychological, economic); the dangers of assuming an overly individualistic position on the subject; the role of meaning of working research in understanding the issues of self-identity; and crises of meaning of working arising from unemployment, lay-offs, and growing poverty around the world.
The perception of meaning in life, or existential meaning, is an individual differences variable requiring improved construct specification and longitudinal analysis. The authors conceptualize of existential meaning as consisting of personal, spiritual, and implicit sub-constructs, respectively, experiencing one's life as having purpose and coherence, experiencing a transcendent presence in which one participates, and manifesting normatively valued attitudes/behavior. Latent cross-lagged panel analysis modeling meaning's longitudinal relations with depressive symptoms in a sample of 395 undergraduates indicated that baseline levels of meaning predicted changes in depressive symptoms over a two-month duration. Additionally, women were found to score higher than men on two of three measures of meaning. Study results have ramifications for how we conceive of and measure existential meaning, as well as how we conceptualize and address psychological distress. The authors conclude with a discussion of social factors requiring further investigation that may influence the experience of meaning in life.
The article outlines dominant themes in existential thinking and considers what this perspective might offer in developing our understanding of leadership. It explores existential concepts primarily using the writings of Sartre. The existential focus on the concepts of essence and existence is outlined and the current concerns with essentialism discussed in relation to this philosophical approach. The article notes that much research into leadership takes an objectivist approach which, while providing important insights into dimensions of leadership, fails to capture the subjective experience of the leadership relationship. The discussion then details existential themes such as freedom, responsibility and meaninglessness and discusses what questions these provoke for the further study of leadership.
The purpose of this study was to derive inductively a taxonomy of managerial performance requirements from many empirical studies of manager perfor- mance. Toward that end, 26 dimension sets were first gathered from published and unpublished studies of manager performance. Most of these studies in- volved critical incidents, and all of them were empirically based. lbenty-five industrial psychologists experienced in research on managers then indepen- dently sorted the 187 managerial performance dimensions into categories ac- cording to perceived similarity in content. These sortings were used to construct a pooled 187 times 187 correlation matrix, and the matrix was factor analyzed. The 18-factor solution is offered as an inductively derived, expert judgment-based summary of managerial performance requirements, using data from many manager jobs and numerous organizations. This taxonomy is compared to other dimension sets, and its potential usefulness discussed.
I have tried to tell you what has seemed to occur in the lives of people with whom I have had the privilege of being in a relationship as they struggled toward becoming themselves. I have endeavored to describe, as accurately as I can, the meanings which seem to be involved in this process of becoming a person. I am sure that I do not see it clearly or completely, since I keep changing in my comprehension and understanding of it. I hope you will accept it as a current and tentative picture, not as something final.
One reason for stressing the tentative nature of what I have said is that I wish to make it clear that I amnot saying: “This is what you should become; here is the goal for you.” Rather, I am saying that these are some of the meanings I see in the experiences that my clients and I have shared. Perhaps this picture of the experience of others may illuminate or give more meaning to some of your own experience.
I have pointed out that the individual appears to have a strong desire to become himself; that given a favorable psychological climate he drops the defensive masks with which he has faced life, and begins to discover and to experience the stranger who lives behind these masks—the hidden parts of himself. I have pictured some of the attributes of the person who emerges—the tendency, to be more open to all elements of his organic experience; the growth of trust in one's organism as an instrument of sensitive living; the acceptance of the fearsome responsibility of being a unique person; and finally the sense of living in one's life as a participant in a fluid, ongoing process, continually discovering new aspects of one's self in the flow of experience. These are some of the things which seem to me to be involved in becoming a person.
The concept of employee engagement has garnered attention in both practitioner and academic communities and several approaches for understanding engagement have developed. Whereas many authors have taken their own approach to understanding employee engagement, others have offered reinterpretations of the concept wrapped in well-researched and documented organizational variables. Fortunately, distinct streams of literature have emerged but are widely disparate, surfacing intermittently in the fields of psychology, sociology, management, human resource development (HRD), human resource management, and health care. This lack of continuity is a significant hurdle for HRD professionals being called on to develop innovative solutions to the absence of engagement inside organizations. The purpose of this integrative literature review was to synthesize the current state of scholarly research on employee engagement. As a result, four major approaches emerged, defining the existing state of employee engagement in the academic community. Each approach is explored and interpretations offered. Implications and questions for HRD bring this article to a close.
In this paper, we present a model of interpersonal sensemaking and describe how this process contributes to the meaning that employees make of their work. The cues employees receive from others in the course of their jobs speak directly to the value ascribed by others to the job, role, and employee. We assert that these cues are crucial inputs in a dynamic process through which employees make meaning of their own jobs, roles, and selves at work. We describe the process through which interpersonal cues and the acts of others inform the meaning of work, and present examples from organizational research to illustrate this process. Interpersonal sensemaking at work as a route to work meaning contributes to theories of job attitudes and meaning of work by elaborating the role of relational cues and interpretive processes in the creation of job, role and self-meaning.