Purpose and Meaning in the Workplace
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PURPOSE
AND
MEANING
IN THE WORKPLACE
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PURPOSE
AND
MEANING
IN THE WORKPLACE
edited
by
Bryan J. Dik, Zinta S. Byrne, and Michael F. Steger
AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION * WASHINGTON, DC
Except as permit-
Copyright © 2013 by the American Psychological Association. All rights reserved.
ted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Purpose and meaning in the workplace / edited by Bryan J. Dik, Zinta S. Byrne, and
Michael F. Steger. — First edition.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4338-1314-6 — ISBN 1-4338-1314-9 1. Career development—Psychological aspects.
2. Job satisfaction. 3. Work—Psychological aspects. 4. Employees—Psychology. I. Dik, Bryan J.
II. Byrne, Zinta S. III. Steger, Michael F. IV. American Psychological Association.
HF5381.P876 2013
658.3001'9—dc23
2012043235
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A CIP record is available from the British Library.
Printed in the United States of America
First Edition
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/14183-000
To my grandfathers, Ralph Dik, Howard P. Longstreet,
and Ross W. Winters,
faithful examples of how to work and live
with purpose and meaning.
—Bryan J. Dik
To myfather, J. P. M. Stofberg, who showed me what it meant
to derive purpose and meaning from work.
—Zinta S. Byrne
To Ava, Rowan, and LeAnn, who enable me to do better work
and remind me of what is meaningful.
—Michael F. Steger
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Contents
CONT
RGB UO Sn lax
FOREWORD Xi
LNT
DU Cr LONe © 3
Cultivating a Meaningful Career 15
Chapter 1. Career Construction: Heeding the Callofthe Heart 17
Paul J. Hartung and Brian J. Taber
Chapter 2. A Person—Environment Fit Approach
to Cultivating Meaning 37
Jo-Ida C. Hansen
Chapter 3. Meaningful Work and the Protean Career 57
Douglas T. Hall, Elana Feldman, and Najung Kim
I
Meaning Making on the Job 79
Chapter 4. Job Crafting and Meaningful Work 81
Justin M. Berg, Jane E. Dutton, and Amy Wrzesniewski
Chapter 5. Employee Engagement and Meaningful Work 105
William A. Kahn and Steven Fellows
vii
viii |CONTENTS
Chapter 6. Profane or Profound? Finding Meaning
in Dirty Work 127
Blake E. Ashforth and Glen E. Kreiner
Chapter 7. Promoting Meaning and Purpose at Work:
A Social-Cognitive Perspective J51
Robert W. Lent
I
Leading a Meaningful Organization 171
Chapter 8. Doing Well, Doing Good, and Doing With: Organizational
Practices for Effectively Cultivating Meaningful Work 173
Michael G. Pratt, Camille Pradies, and Douglas A. Lepisto
Chapter 9. Transformational Leadership and Meaningful Work 197
Fred O. Walumbwa, Amanda L. Christensen, and Michael K. Muchiri
Chapter 10. Connecting the Dots: Coaching Leaders to Turn Values Into
Meaningful Work 217
Dianne R. Stober, Stefanie Putter, and Lauren Garrison
NED 77335)
ABOUT THE EDITORS 247
Contributors
Blake E. Ashforth, PhD, W. P. Carey School of Business,
Arizona State University, Tempe
Justin M. Berg, PhD candidate, The Wharton School, Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
Zinta S. Byrne, PhD, Colorado State University, Fort Collins
Amanda L. Christensen, PhD candidate, W. P. Carey
School of Business, Arizona State University, Tempe
Bryan J. Dik, PhD, Colorado State University, Fort Collins
Jane E. Dutton, PhD, Ross School of Business, University
of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Elana Feldman, PhD candidate, Boston University School
of Management, Boston, MA
Steven Fellows, PhD candidate, Boston University School
of Management, Boston, MA
Lauren Garrison, MS, Colorado State University, Denver
Douglas T. Hall, PhD, Boston University School of Manage-
ment, Boston, MA
Jo-Ida C. Hansen, PhD, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Paul J. Hartung, PhD, Northeast Ohio Medical University,
Rootstown
William A. Kahn, PhD, Boston University School of Man-
agement, Boston, MA
Najung Kim, PhD candidate, Carroll School of Management,
Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA
Glen E. Kreiner, PhD, Smeal College of Business, Pennsyl-
vania State University, State College
Robert W. Lent, PhD, University of Maryland, College Park
Douglas A. Lepisto, PhD candidate, Carroll School of
Management, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA
Michael K. Muchiri, PhD, School of Management and Infor-
mation Systems, CQUniversity, Rockhampton, Queensland,
Australia
David G. Myers, PhD, Hope College, Holland, MI
X GOW TREO ORS
Camille Pradies, PhD candidate, Carroll School of Management, Boston
College, Chestnut Hill, MA
Michael G. Pratt, PhD, Carroll School of Management, Boston College,
Chestnut Hill, MA
Stefanie Putter, MS, C Cubed, Denver, CO
Michael F. Steger, PhD, Colorado State University, Fort Collins;
North-West University, Vanderbijlpark, South Africa
Dianne R. Stober, PhD, C Cubed, Fort Collins, CO
Brian J. Taber, PhD, Oakland University, Rochester, MI
Fred O. Walumbwa, PhD, W. P. Carey School of Business, Arizona
State University, Tempe
Amy Wrzesniewski, PhD, Yale School of Management, Yale Univer-
sity, New Haven, CT
David G. Myers
Foreword
There are still two sorts of jobs. Of one sort, a [person] can
truly say, “I am doing work which is worth doing. It would
still be worth doing if nobody paid for it. But as I have no
private means, and need to be fed and housed and clothed,
I must be paid while I do it.” The other kind of job is that
in which people do work whose sole purpose is that of the
earning of money; work which need not be, ought not to
be, or would not be, done by anyone in the whole world
unless it were paid.
—C. S. Lewis, The World's Last Night
write from Holland, Michigan, which in 2010 was named
“America’s second happiest city” by the Gallup Organiza-
tion (based on data from its daily Gallup-Healthways Well-
Being Index; http://well-beingindex.com/). Having come to
know several of the CEOs of Holland’s major corporations
during my 43 years at Hope College, I conclude that their
efforts to create purpose and meaning in the workplace
have borne some fruit. As religiously motivated humane
capitalists, they have operated their businesses not only to
create products and profits but also to provide quality of life
for their workers (their “members,” as the 7,500-employee
Haworth, Inc., respectfully calls its staff).
These companies were, and some still are, locally owned
the
ventures whose owners and workers rubbed shoulders at
, and at school soccer games. “Why
grocery store, in worship
h
do I do what I do?” mused Haworth founder G. W. Hawort
Nebras ka home-
to me (87 years old, born in a sod house on a
those cars
stead). “I look out my office window and see all
on me
in the parking lot. All those people are depending
their mortgag es, their
to provide for their car payments,
office furnitu re
livelihood.” As we together toured his main
designing and
manufacturing plant, where workers were
xl
xii FOREWORD
industriously producing work environments that aimed to suit workers’
needs, the seemingly universal facial response to seeing their legendary
founder was a broad smile and a warm greeting.
Among the most remarkable people I have known here was indus-
trialist John Donnelly, whose company, the Donnelly Corporation (now
Magna Donnelly), manufactured most mirrors found in U.S.-made cars.
Part of his effort to do good, beyond making safety-enhancing car mir-
rors, was to create meaningful, involving work experiences. To involve
his employees with a sense of entrepreneurial teamwork, Donnelly orga-
nized them into Scanlon plan-guided, self-managed work groups. When
times were good, as they generally were, employees shared in the profits;
when times were bad, top executives took pay cuts. In this company,
the parking lot had no executive parking spaces. After seeing the aging
Donnelly slip on the parking lot ice one day, his employees plotted a gift:
a parking lot sign near his office designating John Donnelly’s parking
place. Although grateful, he promptly removed the sign and hung it in
his office. For Donnelly, an idea about the self-esteem and involvement
of every employee was more important than a parking place or another
million car mirrors.
Shortly before his death at the age of 74, Donnelly wrote me, “What
will I have achieved in life if all I have done is to make car mirrors—
there has to be more to it than that.” A devout Catholic, Donnelly was
inspired by his faith to focus on what he could do for the greater good
rather than what he could gain for himself alone.
Another huge local employer, Herman Miller, Inc. (America’s second
largest office furniture manufacturer), has repeatedly been both a “most
admired company” and one of the “100 best companies to work for” in
Fortune executive surveys (Herman Miller, Inc., 2010).! While under the
leadership of its founder D. J. DePree and sons Hugh DePree and Max
DePree (author of Leadership Is an Art, on employee-empowering man-
agement), Herman Miller functioned as if people mattered. It organized
its workers into small teams. Long before most Americans knew about
the Japanese corporation-as-family model, Herman Miller employees
were participating in decisions about their work, sharing in the com-
pany’s profits, and becoming company stockholders after only a year of
service. Instead of a human resources director, the company had a “Vice
President for People,” whose concerns included nurturing employee
morale, fostering employee suggestions, and facilitating communications.
Underlying this participative approach to Management is a corpo-
rate philosophy that workers are happier and more productive when
'Herman Miller, Inc. (2010, March 5). Herman Miller again tops industry in FORTUNE’s
‘most admired” companies survey [Press release]. Retrieved from http://www.hermanmille
r.
com/about-us/press/press-releases/all/herman-miller-again-tops-industr
y-in-fortunes-
most-admired-companies-survey.html
Foreword xiii
they are respected, cared about, and involved. Max DePree (1989)
wrote, “Words such as love, warmth, personal chemistry are certainly
pertinent” (p. 60).? To judge from informal comments heard over the
back fence and about town, Herman Miller’s participative management
made for a workforce with much higher than average morale, and even
today some of that ethos survives (although the CEO’s salary is no lon-
ge? constrained, as it was under the DePrees, to 20 times the average
full-time worker’s compensation).
For Herman Miller’s humane capitalists, high-level employee morale
was good for business. Compared with depressed employees, those with
higher levels of well-being often have lower medical costs, higher work
efficiency, and less absenteeism (Ford, Cerasoli, Higgins, & Deccesare,
20113; Shockley, Ispas, Rossi, & Levine, 2012*). Thus, just as investing in
prenatal care and preventive well-baby care can reduce net medical costs,
so can investing in employee well-being help the bottom line. By 2011,
every dollar invested in Herman Miller in 1990 was worth nearly $9.
Such success has also marked the Fleetwood Group, a 165-employee
manufacturer of educational furniture and wireless electronic clickers.
When the founder gave 45% of the company to his employees, who
later bought out other family stockholders, it paved the way for the
Fleetwood Group to become one of America’s first employee stock
ownership plans (ESOP) companies. Today, every employee owns part
of the company and, as a group, they own 100% of Fleetwood. The
more years they work, the more they own, yet no one owns more than
just
5%. Like every CEO, Doug Ruch works for his stockholders, who
happen to also be his employees.
and
As a company that endorses “servant leadership” and “respect
n.d.)?, Fleet-
care for each team member—owner” (Fleetwood Group,
during
wood prioritizes people above profits. Thus, when orders lagged
ers commun icated to leader-
the recent recession, the employee-own
Ergo, the com-
ship that job security meant more to them than profits.
answering
pany paid otherwise idle workers to do community service:
like. In tough
phones, building Habitat for Humanity houses, and the
business proceeds , with con-
times and in good, the company tithes the
tributions averaging more than $6,000 per employee.
NY: Doubleday.
2DePree, M. (1989). Leadership is an art. New York,
re, A. L. (2011). Relationships
Ford, M. T., Cerasoli, C. P., Higgins, J. A., & Deccesa
ural health and work performance: A review
between psychological, physical, and behavio
Work Stress,
@ 25, 185-204 .
and meta-analysis.
Levine, B. L. (2012). A meta-analytic
4Shockley, K. M., Ispas, D., Rossi, M. E., &
affect, discrete emotions, and organiza-
investigation of the relationship between state
25, 377-411 .
tional performance. Human Performance, ed from
.. . employee owned. Retriev
5Bleetwood Group. (n.d.). About us: Christ centered
m
http://www. fleetwoodgroup.com/about-us.ht
