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Meaningfulness-
Meaningfulness-making making at work
at work
Timo Vuori
Department of Management and Organisation,
Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki, Finland, and
231
Elina San and Mari Kira
Department of Industrial Engineering and Management,
Aalto University, Espoo, Finland
D2:
Objetivo Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to increase understanding of the ways workers can actively
make their own work experiences more meaningful.
Design/methodology/approach The data consist of 29 interviews with people from three
professions. The authors analyzed the interviews by coding the statements into first- and second-order
categories, and then aggregating them into theoretical constructs; and by recognizing relations between
the constructs.
Findings Workers try to increase the proportion of positive cues extracted from work to make their
work more meaningful. The three main tactics for increasing the proportion of positive cues are
cognitively emphasizing the positive qualities of work, developing competencies to be better able to
produce positive outcomes and positive reactions from others, and influencing the work content.
Research limitations/implications This model provides a preliminary understanding of
meaningfulness-making, based on cross-sectional interview data. Future research should use
alternative methods, and verify and elaborate the findings.
Practical implications Managers can promote workers sense of meaningfulness by coaching and
enabling meaningfulness-making tactics identified in this paper.
Originality/value This paper presents alternative ways to achieve work meaningfulness that
complement the previously recognized job crafting and sensemaking routes.
Keywords Meaningfulness, Positive organizational scholarship, Sensemaking, Job crafting,
Performance management, Organizational behaviour
Paper type Research paper

Mans main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life
(Frankl, 1946/1985, p. 117, a concentration camp survivor and the founder of Logotherapy).

What people keep missing is that what they see is usually the outcome of their own prior
actions (Weick, 1995, p. 135).
A sense of meaningfulness can help in coping in extreme situations. In addition, it can
increase the quality of modern working life. Numerous studies have shown how work
meaningfulness is associated with several positive individual and organizational
consequences. These consequences include individual motivation and well-being
(Antonovsky, 1987, 1996; Hackman and Oldham, 1980; Martin, 2000; Parker et al.,
2001), happiness (Deci and Ryan, 2008; Ryan and Deci, 2001), psychological and
physical health (Baumeister, 1991; Dunn, 1996; Ryff and Singer, 1998; Treadgold, 1999), Qualitative Research in Organizations
and Management: An International
Journal
Vol. 7 No. 2, 2012
pp. 231-248
r Emerald Group Publishing Limited
This research has been funded by the Academy of Finland (grant number: 119612) and the 1746-5648
Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, Aalto University (Timo Vuori). DOI 10.1108/17465641211253110
QROM organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behaviors (Tyler and
7,2 Blader, 2003), and organizational change (Avey et al., 2008).
While existing research has developed a good understanding of the job-related
antecedents and consequences of work meaningfulness (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990;
Hackman and Oldham, 1980; Ryan and Deci, 2000), there is only limited understanding
of the meaningfulness-making process through which employees can themselves make
232 their work more meaningful. There are only few book chapters and articles focussing
on how employees sensemaking and related actions influence their experience of work
meaningfulness by shaping the qualities of work and their interpretations of work
D3: (Pratt and Ashforth, 2003; Wrzesniewski, 2003). Especially, no model focussing
Problema specifically on how people in organizations can themselves make their work
experiences more meaningful has been developed. This study aims to address this gap
in research on work meaningfulness.
We carried out 29 in-depth interviews with people from various professions and
organizations in order to understand the process of making work meaningful.
Our focus was on theory elaboration (Lee, 1999; Lee et al., 1999), and we developed
a model of meaningfulness-making at work. This model looks at the process of
meaningfulness-making from an individuals perspective. We chose to focus on
individuals, who interact with other people, because we see that this approach provides
D1 a necessary first step for theoretical development; and because understanding the
Lgica process from an individual perspective also allows understanding how individuals
could themselves improve their situation.
According to our model, workers try to actively make their work more meaningful.
They experience their work as meaningful when the majority of extracted cues from
work situations are positive and meaningless when the majority of extracted cues are
D6:
negative. They aim to increase the proportion of positive cues and reduce the
Proposicin proportion of negative cues by using three meaningfulness-making tactics: first,
cognitively emphasizing positive work qualities refers to conscious efforts to keep
those qualities of work that feel good active in ones mind and to intentionally search
for more of such qualities in different situations. Such work qualities may, for example,
be the perceived respect for the profession, a high level of autonomy at work, or
a competitive salary. Second, developing competencies refers to the development of
skills that allow workers to transform work situations such that these situations turn
out to be more positive; for example, developing interpersonal skills may make social
situations flow smoother. Finally, influencing the work content refers to workers
actually changing what they do at work and the qualities of the contexts in which they
carry out their work. By these three tactics, the workers influence their work and its
processes, work contexts, and the way they interpret their work. The more employees
engage in these three meaningfulness-making tactics, the more meaningful their work
becomes.
D5: Papel de Theoretical background
la revisin Work meaningfulness
Work meaningfulness can be defined by defining the words meaning and
meaningfulness (Baumeister, 1991; Baumeister and Vohs, 2002; Martela, 2010). The
meaning of any given concept or unit refers to its connection to other concepts or units;
it is the other concepts and units that are associated with the focal concept/unit
that determine its place in the world and, thus, its meaning (Mead, 1934). For instance,
someone can associate work with physical activity and food provided by the work.
 In this example, the meaning of work would be a physical activity that provides Meaningfulness-
necessary resources for living. Hence, meaning is an understanding of the connections making at work
and purpose of an activity without an evaluative component. Meaningfulness, on the
other hand, refers to a positive meaning and the significance of an activity (Baumeister
and Vohs, 2002). Something is meaningful when the associations it has are experienced
cognitively and affectively as positive. For instance, for some people the work of
medical doctors is associated with curing patients and curing patients is experienced 233
as positive, which makes the work of medical doctors meaningful for those people. As
the example shows, work meaningfulness is always a subjective experience since there
is no objective criterion for defining which associations are positive. Formally, work
meaningfulness refers to a subjective state which results from a high level of positivity
in the entities that one associates with his or her work. When people experience their
work as meaningful, they associate it strongly with positive things that can relate to,
for example, the outcomes of work or the way the person feels while working.
Several scholars have developed complementary conceptualizations of the antecedents
of work meaningfulness. These antecedents vary from job characteristics and fair
compensation to doing positive things for others, performing well, and being a part of
a socially valued group. The essence of each of these models is that the scholars have
recognized that the meaning of some measurable factors relating to work or working are
often experienced as positive, even though this implicit insight is usually not explicitly
stated. According to Hackman and Oldham (1980), work meaningfulness arises from the
skill variety, task identity and task significance of a job. Martin (2000) made a distinction
between craft, moral, and compensation motives as antecedents of meaningful work.
Also social identity has been recognized as an antecedent: one finds meaning not in what
one does, but in whom one surrounds oneself with as part of organizational membership,
and/or in the goals, values, and beliefs that the organization espouses (Pratt and
Ashforth, 2003, p. 314).
During the past few years, research on work as a calling has complemented the
research on work meaningfulness (Berg et al., 2010a; Bunderson and Thompson, 2009;
Wrzesniewski, 2003). People with Calling orientations work not for financial rewards
or for advancement, but for the fulfillment that doing the work brings [y] whether the
work does contribute to making the world a better place (Wrzesniewski, 2003, p. 301).
While this definition of calling is indeed close to our definition of work
D4:Uso meaningfulness, there is also a crucial difference. The subjective experience of
de teora work meaningfulness can arise from any association that is perceived as positive (and
not just from being a part of the larger scheme of things); work meaningfulness is
therefore a broader concept than calling. This difference in definitions becomes crucial in
our empirical material as people do not relate work meaningfulness only to their
contribution to society but also to the personal consequences of work. For example,
a pharmaceutical sales representative who helps in curing patients with the latest
medicine may see how her work contributes to the greater good of society and yet not
experience her work as meaningful because it consumes too much of her personal
resources and drives her toward burnout.

Meaningfulness-making
Although the antecedents of meaningfulness identified above are important,
Wrzesniewski (2003, p. 297) emphasizes that it is not so much the kind of work
that matters as it is the relationship to the work in fostering meaningfulness.
Meaningfulness-making refers to a process during which people actively influence
QROM their work and their interpretation of their work to make it more meaningful. Two
7,2 dynamic perspectives on meaningfulness-making sensemaking and job crafting are
especially relevant for our study.
Sensemaking refers to a process in which people extract cues from their
environment, interpret them by asking what is going on? and what should I do
now?, and then take actions that can influence the situation and thus produce new
234 cues for the people to extract (Weick et al., 2005). Cues have a central role in
sensemaking: people observe some elements in their environment while ignoring
others; those things that they observe facilitate their action and understanding
(Weick, 1995). In addition, [t]he cues employees receive from others in the course of
their jobs [y] are crucial inputs in a dynamic process through which employees make
meaning of their own jobs, roles, and selves at work (Wrzesniewski et al., 2003, p. 93).
Accordingly, people observe only some of the potential cues, evaluate them as positive
or negative, and determine why the cues emerged. If they come to believe that the
cues indicate that their work is valued by others and provides benefits for themselves,
they begin to see the work as meaningful. In addition, people can alter their behaviors
in order to extract more positive cues.
While the sensemaking theory recognizes that people can influence the situations
in which they function in addition to altering their attention to and interpretation of
the situations, the theory still mainly focusses on the socio-cognitive component of
the process (Weick et al., 2005; Whiteman and Cooper, 2011). The model of job
crafting (Wrzesniewski and Dutton, 2001) compensates for this by giving an equal
weight to the ways people use to change the characteristics of the situations in which
they function (and not only their interpretation of the situation). Accordingly, people
tend to shape the cognitive, task, and relational boundaries of their work in order to
change the meaning of the work to better match their preferences. For example,
Hospital cleaners [change their work boundaries by] actively caring for patients and
families [which makes the] cleaners change the meaning of their jobs to be helpers of
the sick (Wrzesniewski and Dutton, 2001, p. 185, table 1). The main idea of job
crafting is, then, that employees can actively change what they do at work, with
whom they do their work, and how they interpret and understand the reasons behind
and consequences of their work. These choices influence the meaning they perceive
their work to have. By extension, job crafting should consequently also influence the
level of work meaningfulness the workers will experience. However, while recent
empirical research has started to investigate the antecedents and tactics of job
crafting in general (Berg et al., 2010b), researchers have not yet investigated how
meaningfulness-related concerns trigger job crafting and which kinds of tactics
people would then use.
In sum, when employees extract plenty of positive cues they experience their work as
meaningful and that they can influence the proportion of positive cues by focussing
attention to some cues only and by crafting their job to consist of more positive situations.
However, the existing sensemaking and job crafting approaches allow understanding
only some aspects of how workers influence different qualities of their work and work
experiences because they do not directly address the meaningfulness-making question.
Scholars (Pratt and Ashforth, 2003, p. 326) have thus emphasized that more research on
meaningfulness-making is needed. For example, Ashford et al. (2007) stated that:
Working as a nonstandard is often accompanied by a sense of fragmentation, discontinuity,
and confusion about [y] the meaning of ones work. (p. 85) Existing research does not offer
a nuanced or adequate understanding of the new world of work (p. 79).
Given the above discussed limitations of our current understanding of work Meaningfulness-
meaningfulness, it is justified to start with an open-ended research question rather making at work
than to focus on a specific gap. There are many, possibly interdependent issues that
need to be understood. The purpose of this paper is to develop an overall model of
meaningfulness-making that can function as a starting point for more detailed studies.
We ask, how do people in organizations make their work more meaningful?
235
Data and methods
Sampling and data collection
In studying meaningfulness-making, valuable information can be obtained by asking
very simple questions about the everyday experiences of typical people because the
good life is territory largely unexplored by social scientists (Peterson and Seligman,
2003, p. 24). We therefore carried out a cross-sectional study and interviewed people
from different professions. By studying different kinds of professions and identifying
common patterns, we were able to find analytically generalizable (e.g. Yin, 2003)
results. The three professions were pharmaceutical sales representatives, researchers,
and human resource (HR) professionals. The unit of analysis was, however, an
individual rather than a profession.
Pharmaceutical sales representatives work for pharmaceutical companies to promote
the sales of medicines. They travel by car and typically meet four to six physicians a day
at different hospitals to present the products of the company to them. Researchers
investigate physical and social phenomena, write research reports about the phenomena,
and sometimes also try to influence the social systems they are investigating. HR
professionals are responsible for developing various HR-related practices, in such areas
as recruitment and personnel management, for their companies.
We chose these three professions as the sample of this study because they provided
the necessary variety between jobs. They differed along two dimensions that are
relevant for understanding how work meaningfulness is constructed and develops
over time. First, the professions represent different types of knowledge-intensive work:
selling (the pharmaceutical sales representatives), the application of knowledge in J4: Composicin
developing practices (the HR professionals), and the development of knowledge de la muestra
(the researchers). This difference in the focus of work made it possible to consider
whether the ultimate goal of the work had a major role in explaining meaningfulness.
As we explain later, however, we found that similar tactics of shaping both
interpretations and qualities of work were used in each profession, despite their large
differences. Second, the three professions differed in terms of the time span of the work:
the work-unit for sales representatives was typically one meeting, HR professionals
typically worked for weeks on projects and issues, and researchers spent months or
years working on the same project. These differences in time span helped us examine
whether there was any connection between the duration of a typical work unit and
the pace and type of the meaningfulness-making process. In addition, choosing three
professions ensured sufficient diversity between jobs while it also made it possible for
us to see diversity within jobs. J3: Tamao de la
We interviewed 29 individuals from the three professions and 11 organizations.
muestra
Most of the interviewees were 25-45 years old, nine were men and 20 were female. The
pharmaceutical sales representatives were chosen by the CEO of the company for
interviews and the other interviewees were contacted directly by the second author. It
is possible that the CEO of the sales representatives intentionally chose only
representatives that would give a nice impression and that only those individuals from
QROM the two other professions who were interested in work meaningfulness agreed to be
7,2 interviewed. However, the fact that some of the interviewees provided cynical or
negative comments indicates that this bias is not absolute. In addition, our focus was
on trying to understand the process of meaningfulness-making and answer the how-
question (Yin, 2003) instead of finding statistical relationships. In other words, the
degree of how prone the selected interviewees were to meaningfulness-making is of J2:
236 little relevance to the focus of this study, the meaningfulness-making process. Thereby, Poblacin
the possibility that the sample consists of an over-/underrepresentation of optimistic,
meaningfulness-making engaged workers, will not affect our understanding of the
process itself.
Most of the interviews lasted between 60 and 90 minutes. The first author interviewed
13 pharmaceutical sales representatives and the second author interviewed eight
researchers and eight HR professionals. All the interviews were recorded and
transcribed.
We started each interview by emphasizing its confidentiality and by explaining the
general purpose of the interview. The interview was divided into three parts. First, we
asked questions about the interviewees backgrounds and about the general J6: Tcnica
characteristics of their work. The questions included: Please tell me what your recoleccin
normal working day is like. Describe concretely, step by step, what you do? Have your
working days changed during the time you have worked here? and further inquiries
about details and other follow-up questions that seemed relevant (interview-by-
interview basis). We paid special attention to ask facts from the interviewees, following
the court-room procedure (Eisenhardt, 1989), in addition to their interpretations. For
example, when a sales representative said that the physician was rude, we pushed
further and asked, What did he concretely say? How did he change the tone of his
voice? What did he do concretely? We then moved on to discuss how the interviewees
had developed in the job. We asked, for example, How have you developed? Compare
how you were working one year/month ago and now, what things do you do
differently? Why? What have you done intentionally to develop yourself? Have you
learned through other means as well? How have others reactions to you changed?
Finally, we asked questions that related to well-being, feelings, and meaningfulness
at work. Again, we emphasized the longitudinal aspect and asked, for instance, How
meaningful is your work? Have you noticed any changes in the level of meaningfulness
since you started in this profession? Throughout the interviews, we encouraged the
interviewees to elaborate on and expand their responses to the questions. In addition,
as the questions above illustrate, we asked the interviewees to tell longitudinal
narratives of how their work and work experiences had evolved over time. This
allowed us to partially counter the research design limitation that we interviewed the
research subjects only once. We could see an initial state, some actions by the
participants, and consequent changes in their state and behaviors. The limitation is
that all the data is self-reported and can therefore overemphasize the intentionality and
influence of the interviewees. Yet, this approach allowed recognizing longitudinal
dynamics that have not been uncovered by previous research and, thus, takes our
understanding one step further.
We followed the principles of theoretical sampling and constant comparative
analysis in data collection (Strauss and Corbin, 1998). We started analyzing our data
after the first three interviews and kept updating our interview protocol in order to find
more evidence for the theoretically most relevant topics. Whenever an interviewee
mentioned something that seemed theoretically relevant but was not included in our

J1: Tipo de
diseo
interview protocol, we made notes to ask probing questions relating to that theme also Meaningfulness-
in the next interviews. For instance, when we noted that employees often experience making at work
some work activities as positive and negative at the same time, we included a question
that asked the interviewees to describe such situations into the interview protocol. The
purpose of these additional questions was to deepen our understanding of the
emerging theoretical elements and categories that relate to the phenomenon under
study, as prescribed by methodological authorities (Eisenhardt, 1989; Lee, 1999; 237
Strauss and Corbin, 1998).

Analyzing the data and building a model

We started the data analysis by doing open coding and writing theoretical memos
(Strauss and Corbin, 1998). The open codes and memoing resulted in a large number of
potential ideas that we started refining in systematic ways. Essential tools in the
systematic analysis were meaning condensation (e.g. Lee, 1999) and selective coding
(Strauss and Corbin, 1998). We read through the interview transcripts and marked
similar statements with similar codes. After we had identified the most relevant codes,
we started calling them categories and moved on to refine these categories. We re-read
all the transcripts and coded them line-by-line to the categories. This process was
highly iterative as new data sometimes disconfirmed, changed, or sharpened our ideas,
and helped us refine the categories. The first and the second author carried out this
analysis independently and then compared each others findings. When there were
inconsistencies, they negotiated an interpretation that was accepted by both and by the
third author. The initial level of inter-coder agreement was 73 percent in a sample of
three interviews.
Simultaneously with developing the empirical categories at a relatively low level of
abstraction, we identified and developed more abstract categories. We aggregated the
categories at multiple levels of abstraction, which resulted in a hierarchy of categories
identified in Figure 1. Examples of the empirical categories include individual
reflection and knowledge acquisition. These two empirical categories, along with
many others, were combined to a mid-level category of developing competencies.
Developing competencies, in its turn, was included in the category of
meaningfulness-making tactics which forms an even more abstract category.
We also identified patterns and processes, and relations among the categories, while
refining the categories, because [c]oding for process occurs simultaneously with
coding for properties (Strauss and Corbin, 1998, p. 167). In essence, we identified
causal and chronological relations between the categories at the conceptual level. We
did this by identifying different micro-narratives and sequences from the data and by
comparing the data to existing literature. When an idea emerged, we always checked if
it was consistent with the rest of the data. Ultimately, after dozens of iterations, we
arrived at the model presented below.

Ensuring trustworthiness
In order to increase the trustworthiness (Shah and Corley, 2006) of our findings, we
presented our findings and ideas to other researchers and some of the interviewees and
their co-workers during all stages of the research process. We gave formal
presentations, asked our colleagues to comment on earlier drafts of this paper, and
discussed our ideas informally. We explicitly asked for critical evaluations of our ideas
and received some valuable feedback that helped us in the iteration process. We were
sensitive to the feedback and used it to refine our ideas.
QROM
7,2
238
Figure 1.
This figure illustrates how
we arrived at the
theoretical concepts from
the empirical codes
Figure 2.
Workers interpret
extracted cues and derive
positive and negative
interpretations of their
work
Questioning the goal of the task Questioning ones ability
Questioning ones abilities
to contribute
(contribution dimension)
Negative and positive social treatment at work Positive and negative
Loneliness interpretations of work
Negative and positive work characteristics Questioning the
adequacy of pleasure and meaningfulness
Inadequate compensation
Stress and hurry benefits from working
Long days and travel (benefit and pleasure
Fixed-term contracts dimensions)
Taking work home
Positive framing Cognitive emphasizing
Contrasting to earlier jobs positive qualities of
Individual reflection work
Collective reflection
Knowledge acquisition Developing ones
Practicing Meaningfulness-
competencies making techniques
Getting help from others
Learning by doing
Negotiating task boundaries
Ignoring demands
Influencing work content
Influencing institutions
Scheduling
Achieving ones goals J7: Codificacin
Seeing people change Seeing outcomes of
Research publications ones work
Cues
Feedback from supervisors
Feedback from co-workers Feedback
Feedback from beneficaries
Findings
We found that workers engage in different types of meaningfulness-making tactics and
created a theoretical model based on these findings (Figure 2). They extract cues from
their work situations and interpret them as positive or negative. When their
interpretations are mainly positive they experience their work as meaningful, and
J7: Modelo
4B
4A
Positive
interpretation
2A 3A
1A I am contributing Meaningfulness - Use of meaningfulness-
I am benefiting and
making techniques
Action and feeling pleasure
Interpreting Cognitively emphasizing
interaction in 5
extracted positive work qualities
various Developing competencies
cues Negative
situations Influencing work content
interpretation
Lack of +
1B I am not contributing 3B
meaningfulness
I am not benefiting 2B
nor feeling pleasure
Note: Positive interpretations increase work meaningfulness and negative interpretations
decrease work meaningfulness. The lack of meaningfulness triggers the use of
meaningfulness-making techniques. Meaningfulness-making techniques influence the
workers future actions and the way they interpret cues that have emerged, emerge, and
will emerge from their past, present, and future actions
when the majority of their interpretations are not positive they do not experience their Meaningfulness-
work as meaningful. Especially the interpretations of the contribution workers are making at work
making at work and the benefits and pleasure they receive from working relate to
meaningfulness. Workers try to actively increase the proportion of positive cues in
order to increase the meaningfulness of their work. Different tactics for increasing the
proportion of positive cues include cognitively emphasizing the positive qualities of
work, developing new competencies to be better able to produce good results and 239
positive reactions from others, and influencing the work content. These tactics lead to
outcomes that influence the workers future actions and interactions in ways that make
the emergence of positive cues more likely. In addition, the tactics make the workers
interpret the cues that have emerged, emerge, and will emerge from their past, present,
and future actions and interactions more positively. Hence, the meaningfulness-making
tactics make workers experience their work as more meaningful.

Cues and interpretations

According to Weick (1995), people notice different cues during their daily work actions
and interactions, and use these cues to interpret what is going on. Almost everything
they hear, see, and feel can function as a cue, as long as they are able to link the cue to
their understanding of the work. Workers can interpret cues positively or negatively
and, consequently, attach positive or negative meanings to their work (Wrzesniewski
et al., 2003). These cues are, thus, used to evaluate the meaning of ones work. For
example, we found that when sales representatives talk with a physician, they observe
the physicians reactions and interpret them to determine whether the physician
experienced the meeting as useful or not. When it seems that the physician did indeed
experience the meeting as useful, the sales representatives can conclude that they are
doing valuable work and attach a positive meaning to their work experience (arrow
1A; and 1B for the negative version in Figure 2). The excerpts from interviews
exemplify different types of cues:
[I feel negative] if the physician is really arrogant and wants to make fun of the representative
in front of everyone else (Sales representative number 5). J5: Transcripciones
[I feel positive] if the physician tells you that some patient had got well because of the new
medicine and thanks you (S3).
The positive and negative cues seemed to have a similar role in determining
meaningfulness for the researchers and HR professionals:
Question: What shows you that you are succeeding and doing valuable work?

Answer: [y] publications in good journals, rewards (Researcher 3).

Question: What negative aspects are there in your work?

Answer: [y] if the collaborating companies complain and say this is complete nonsense (R1).

Question: What shows you that you are succeeding and doing valuable work?

Answer: [y] the feedback I get on my importance from my colleagues (HR professional 5).
The researcher who provided the first quote above interpreted that publications and
rewards mean that she has succeeded in her work and that other people value that,
which is tantamount to experiencing meaningfulness. Conversely, the second quote
QROM illustrates a situation where other people do not value the researchers work, which
7,2 may decrease the experience of meaningfulness. Finally, the last quote shows how the
HR professional used feedback to determine whether she was doing meaningful
work or not.

Subjective experience of (the lack of) meaningfulness

240 The way people interpreted the cues they had extracted influenced the level of
work meaningfulness they experienced. When the majority of their interpretations
were positive, they were likely to experience their work as meaningful (arrow 2A in
Figure 2). Conversely, when the majority of cues were negative, they interpreted their
work as lacking meaningfulness (arrow 2B). We found that two dimensions were
especially relevant for the experience of work meaningfulness in our sample.
Contribution to a greater cause. The interviewees had doubts about whether their
work was contributing to the greater good of their organization or society in general. In
the first place, they were worried if the goals of their work, in general, were meaningful.
For example, the pharmaceutical sales representatives pondered whether their work
was primarily about helping physicians heal patients, or about manipulating them to
prescribe more drugs regardless of patients needs in order to increase company
profits. The former alternative was usually seen as positive and the latter as negative:
I am part of the health care system [y] were not doing any charity here, were earning
money, and so thats different. I see myself as belonging to that system and giving physicians
opportunities to treat their patients as efficiently as possible with medicine. [y] My purpose
is not to [pause] I dont see myself as doing charity here, but I also regard it as a good deed
that in this job [pause] Im giving physicians information (S9).

I mostly work with basic research which is far away from applications, sometimes I wonder
whether all this has any significance (R3).

I am one piece, one number of this gigantic company. Thats not always a good thing (H1).
In addition to worrying whether their goals were meaningful or not, the interviewees
pondered whether they were personally able to achieve these goals. For example, when
the researchers admitted that research in general makes the progress of societies
possible, they still deliberated whether they were, as individuals, skilled enough to do
valuable research:
One of my goals is to someday manage this job so well that it wouldnt cause me unreasonable
stress anymore, so that it would be pleasant and I could go to work feeling fresh and with
a smile. So that Id really have competence, I wouldnt have to stress about whether I know
enough (S7).

You can get so many kinds of demands for additional analyzes. Sometimes I feel I cant make
it. Im like, help, I cant do this (R7).

I still have a strong feeling that I will never become ready for this job. Im not ready for the
demands. There are always new challenges, I should learn to somehow be even better and
skilled (H6).
Getting benefits and feeling pleasure. Work meaningfulness was also challenged
by an experienced lack of received benefits and pleasure from working. Most of
the interviewees experienced that their work was sometimes too consuming for them
in a physical or emotional sense. The source of these experiences varied broadly from
objective work characteristics, such as fragmented tasks and bureaucratic demands, to Meaningfulness-
social interaction and respectful treatment. For example, the sales representatives were making at work
sometimes haunted by arrogant physicians, but some of them also thought that one of
the best parts of the job was interacting with the physicians. Similarly, some HR
professionals thought at times that their pay was not fair, although some of them
experienced that they were compensated well for their work. The researchers were
frustrated with some bureaucratic management practices in their organizations. The 241
following quotes further illustrate the negative experiences and interpretations:
The customers arent interested, no one shows interest even though youve planned a
presentation and get them something to eat. If nobody listens. Or if you drive far away and
nobodys there, if you get the feeling that no ones interested (S12).

Where does it [the respect for my work] show up? At least not in the salary or other type of
compensation (H4).

The university doesnt treat researchers the way it should, it doesnt know how to manage
creative work (R1).
If the dimensions of interpretations are considered in terms of the antecedents of work
meaningfulness, it can be noted that our categorization is consistent with the theories
reviewed in the theory section. The contribution dimension contains elements of task
significance (Hackman and Oldham, 1980), moral and craft motives (Martin, 2000),
and social value of ones in-group (Pratt and Ashforth, 2003). Similarly, the benefit and
pleasure dimension contains elements of objective work characteristics (Hackman
and Oldham, 1980), and craft and compensation motives (Martin, 2000). We chose to
use the two dimensions because these two categories emerged from our empirical
material and we did not want to force our data to pre-defined categories.

Meaningfulness-making techniques
We observed that those interviewees who had recently gone through an increase in the
proportion of negative cues emphasized that they should actively try to influence
the situation and, thus, increase the proportion of positive cues. For instance, a HR
manager who had recently had some difficulties with social relations at work stated
that she should just try to get along [with other people] and sort out and seize different
things [because] it all really depends mainly on how you yourself try to make things
work (H1). Conversely, those interviewees whose level of work meaningfulness had
remained high for a longer period of time were less aggressive in emphasizing that
they should do something to change their job situation. Hence, it can be said that, in
many instances, experiencing low levels of meaningfulness triggered the use of
meaningfulness-making tactics (arrow 3B in Figure 2) whereas the experience of high
level of meaningfulness seemed to have an opposite effect (arrow 3A). This idea that a
negative sensation triggers actions that lead to positive outcomes is consistent with
several psychological theories on, for example, coping (Folkman and Moskowitz, 2004),
happiness (e.g. Shmotkin, 2005), and workplace learning (e.g. Illeris, 2003). We
recognized three main tactics the interviewees used.
Cognitively emphasizing positive work qualities. The first technique relates to
emphasizing the positive qualities of work in ones mind. The interviewees explained
how they just have to find the pleasant sides of that (H4). In essence, they reflected
their work experiences both individually and collectively with their co-workers to come
up with more positive meanings for their work. For example, the sales representatives
QROM tended to emphasize their role in helping physicians and patients: I just try to think
7,2 about it from the point of view of patients well-being (S3). This tactic was not limited
to emphasizing ones contribution to other people but many interviewees also
discussed how negative work experiences that challenged positive interpretations of
benefits and pleasures received actually made them stronger as persons.
The tactic of cognitively emphasizing the positive is the most passive tactic relative
242 to the qualities of work. When reinterpreting the work qualities, the workers only
changed their subjective understanding of the work and did not influence the work
itself in any way. This tactic could have led them to perceive the unchanged qualities of
work as more positive and, hence, would have increased their work meaningfulness,
even if nothing in the work itself had changed. Emphasizing the positive qualities of
work is a form of cognitive crafting, as workers change the way they view their job
(Wrzesniewski and Dutton, 2001).
Developing skills and knowledge. The interviewees also developed their skills and
knowledge to increase the proportion of positive cues. Developing skills and knowledge is
a more active approach toward the qualities of work than changing ones interpretations.
This tactic can make workers behave in a different way in their work situations and,
hence, influence how the situations will unfold. In this way, they are changing the
qualities of their work situation and potentially making them more meaningful.
The interviewees described multiple ways for developing skills and knowledge. Such
tactics were reading professional literature, rehearsing presentations in front of a mirror,
and asking for help from more experienced co-workers. These tactics helped them
increase the proportion of positive cues in terms of both the contribution dimension and
the pleasure and benefits dimension because these tactics increased their personal
resources, rendering them able to handle future situations better (cf. Salanova et al.,
2006). For example, the sales representatives explained that when they improved their
persuasion skills and learned more about the medicine, they were able to educate the
physicians better (contribution dimension), while the physicians were less able to
humiliate them (benefit and pleasure dimension). By educating the physicians better, the
outcome of the meetings changed: the physicians became more likely to prescribe the
medicine promoted by the sales representative to patients and the patients became more
likely to get better; and the content of the words the physicians said during the sales
meeting changed from contemptuous to genuinely interested.
Influencing work content. The final method for increasing work meaningfulness was
influencing the content of work. This tactic was most strongly directed at the qualities
of work rather than at the workers interpretation of work qualities or behavior in work
situations. When people change the content of their work the situations they encounter
change. Consequently, also the outcomes of their work and the cues they can extract
change. The tactic included both renegotiating ones responsibilities within ones team
and trying to influence the general conditions of ones work by participating in policy
making:

You can organize things, you just have to keep on persuading people (R1).

Science policy activities at a general level, Im part of the science and technology council, and
other similar ones [y] in which direction the technology and science policy in this country
should go (R3).
The tactic illustrated in the first quote above is consistent with Wrzesniewski and
Duttons (2001) proposition that all workers craft their task and relational boundaries
to increase work meaningfulness. The second quote is more related to the process of Meaningfulness-
issue selling (Dutton et al., 2001) and to the ways individuals influence institutionalized making at work
practices ( Jarzabkowski, 2008; Reay et al., 2006). In essence, however, both of the ways
of changing the content of ones work aim at redefining ones responsibilities in ways
that make it more meaningful.

Consequences of meaningfulness-making techniques and new cues 243

The use of the meaningfulness-making techniques that the interviewees had used at an
earlier point in time influenced how they acted and interacted at later points in time
(arrow 4B). When they changed their way of acting and interacting, they achieved
better results and other people reacted more positively. Consequently, new kinds of
actions and interactions produced new kinds of cues (arrow 5). In addition, when they
learned to cognitively emphasize the positive qualities of their work, they interpreted
the cues more positively (arrow 4A). For example, when a scientist, who questioned the
value of basic research, learned to emphasize its role in breakthrough innovations, she
started to pay more attention to cues indicating the valuable role of basic research;
she also re-interpreted old cues concerning basic research more positively. Similarly, as
she developed her skills as a researcher, she was able to make more interesting findings
and thus contribute more, which resulted in more positive cues. Finally, by modifying
her work demands by participating in committees determining work contents, she was
able to concentrate more on the tasks she found meaningful. Consequently, she
experienced her work as more meaningful because she received a larger number of
positive cues and interpreted them more positively.

Discussion and conclusion

We developed a model of meaningfulness-making at work that elaborates existing
theory on work meaningfulness. According to the model, people want to contribute to
valuable goals by working and they want to benefit from work and enjoy working. The
level of work meaningfulness decreases when people feel that they are not
contributing, benefiting, nor enjoying themselves at work. They seek to increase the
level of work meaningfulness by cognitively emphasizing the positive qualities of their
work, by developing their competencies, and by influencing their work content.
Consequently, they will act and interact differently in future situations and interpret
these situations in new ways. Hence, they may become better able to make and hold on
to positive interpretations of their contribution in and benefits and pleasure from work.
This makes them experience their work as more meaningful.

Theoretical contributions
Our findings have implications on the existing theoretical perspectives on
meaningfulness-making. First, Wrzesniewski and Duttons (2001) theory of job
crafting emphasizes employees active actions in making job characteristics more
meaningful. Our model is consistent with their argument and also goes further.
Wrzesniewski and Dutton focus on cognitive, task, and relational boundaries of work.
These are analogous to framing work more positively and influencing ones work
environment; two of the three meaningfulness-making techniques that were recognized
in our model. In addition, we point out that employees may develop their ability to do
their work better to increase their sense of meaningfulness at work. When people
develop new skills, they will change the way they function in future situations
such that those situations provide more positive cues for them. Hence, they succeed in
QROM increasing their work meaningfulness by influencing their work situations through
7,2 changing their own behavior in those situations. This technique is an important
addition to the existing job crafting (and coping) techniques. Changing task boundaries
or social relations is often not possible because of, for example, strictly defined
processes and structures. Likewise, changing ones interpretation from negative to
positive can be difficult if the cues extracted in a work situation are of such quality that
244 they are difficult to reinterpret as positive (e.g. physical pain, direct insults, below
average salary). A third option is to change how well one is able to handle the situation
and, thus, influence what happens in the situation and increase its meaningfulness
(e.g. better hand-eye coordination reduces painful accidents, smoother interpersonal
skills result in less hostile behaviors from others, better work results increase the
chances of a salary increase).
Second, also sensemaking theory (Weick, 1995) emphasizes the dynamic nature of
work characteristics. The main difference between sensemaking and meaningfulness-
making, as described in this paper, is in the level of detail. Sensemaking is more general
and focusses on making sense of what is going on. Instead, our model focusses on
making work meaningful, which is a more limited and value-laden concept. This
produces some differences in the process; in order to find meaningfulness, people need
to emphasize the positive, whereas in order to make sense, people just need to
understand. Therefore, in meaningfulness-making, people try to create positive order
by emphasizing their contribution and increasing their ability to contribute; and by
amplifying the benefits they get from working. These observations can be crucial when
trying to understand how people make sense of work situations: in some cases the
desire to interpret ones work and contribution as positive can lead to performance-
harming biases if people prefer to use the cognitively emphasizing positive work
qualities meaningfulness-making technique. For example, sales people whose
performance is below average may actively focus only on their successes, ignoring the
fact that most sales meetings failed. Thus, they will continue performing poorly and
their understanding of the situation actually becomes less enabling of future action and
success. This possibility is not yet adequately incorporated in the sensemaking theory
(Weick, 1993; Weick, 1995; Weick, 2010), even though identity construction is given a
central role. Future research on sensemaking should, therefore, pay more attention to
peoples concerns of Am I doing good things? and Am I getting enough out of this?
in addition to the more self-defining Who am I? to better understand the choices
people make.

Practical implications
Workers can increase their sense of meaningfulness by actively developing their
abilities to contribute more, by influencing their work content to make work
meaningful, and by interpreting their work more positively. Managers should therefore
help their workers employ such meaningfulness-making tactics. For example, workers
could explicitly consider how their work is contributing and identify how they could
contribute even more. Organizations could help workers in this process by describing
the larger structures and processes in which their work is embedded.

Limitations and future research

This paper focussed on theory development rather than theory testing. Hence, the
measurement and operationalization of the developed concepts remained at a
preliminary stage. In future research, more nuanced and rigorous measures should be
used. One possibility would be to ask workers to answer survey questions that assess Meaningfulness-
their perception of the contributions they make and the benefits they receive at work. making at work
In this way, the level of positivity along each meaningfulness dimension could be
assessed. In a longitudinal research design, the use of different meaningfulness-making
techniques and their effects could then be assessed to test our arguments.
Second, our study was limited to observing meaningfulness-making practices that
already take place. The practices we observed may not be the most effective ways 245
to increase work meaningfulness. Various life philosophies, self-management gurus,
and religions have undoubtedly developed numerous techniques for increasing life
meaningfulness. But as people are not generally aware of these tactics they cannot
apply them at work. Hence, future research might identify some of such tactics,
develop applications for increasing work meaningfulness, and test their effectiveness.
This kind of a research program could result in the recognition of a set of
meaningfulness-making techniques that would help millions of workers make their
work more meaningful.
Third, we failed to collect data on the personal life context of the interviewees.
It might be that workers compare their personal life with their working life and set
their expectations at work based on their personal life. For example, individuals who
are treated with respect at home might be more likely to expect respectful treatment at
work than individuals who are physically abused at home. Consequently, active
meaningfulness-making strategies might be triggered by a change in someones life
context, in addition to things that happen at work. Future research should build more
comprehensive models of work meaningfulness that take the life context better into
account.
Fourth, it should be noted that the individuals we interviewed varied in terms
of how proactively they engaged in meaningfulness-making tactics. While our data
was not sufficiently broad to identify factors determining this proactivity, there are two
factors that future research can consider in terms of this triggering sensitivity. First,
individuals aspiration levels may vary such that some individuals expect work to be
highly meaningful whereas others are satisfied with a lower level of meaningfulness.
Second, individuals may differ in terms of how much they believe they can influence
their work and interpretation of work (cf. Bandura, 1997).
Fifth, our sampling strategy may have ruled out long-term negative effects of
meaningfulness-making tactics. The tactics make people more optimistic and, hence,
aim at higher goals. If the requirements of work are continuously higher than workers
resources and if the treatment at work is consuming, this can lead to burnout in the
long term. Individuals who are optimistic may try to tolerate such situations longer but
ultimately burn out. The people we interviewed were still in their professions and we
did not try to contact people who had left the profession. However, we recognized
active tactics that increase the ability to handle work situations and change the
qualities of work. These kind of tactics should rather reduce the consuming effects of
work than increase them.
Sixth, this study examined the relationship between different types of job crafting
practices and meaningfulness-making at a fairly general level. Our study was mainly
able to associate cognitive crafting with cognitively emphasizing positive work
qualities and explain how influencing work content takes the form of task crafting or
relational crafting. Further research could explore the relation between different job
crafting practices and meaningfulness-making in more detail, and also investigate the
role of leisure crafting (Berg et al., 2010a) in the meaningfulness-making process.
QROM Finally, this research was able to recognize a specific type of cognitive crafting
7,2 how workers search for and pay attention to various positive qualities in their
work and try to actively keep these in mind. In their original job crafting paper,
Wrzesniewski and Dutton (2001) state that cognitive crafting may take various forms,
but they focus on introducing only one such form viewing the job as an integrated
whole instead of a set of discrete work tasks. Further research could explore the area of
246 cognitive crafting more thoroughly, and provide valuable knowledge on the versatility
of cognitive job crafting and its link to meaningfulness-making.

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Corresponding author
Timo Vuori can be contacted at: timo.vuori@hanken.Fi

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