Resumen de What makes work meaningful -- or meaningless
Catherine Bailey, Adrian Madden
Surprisingly little research has explored where and how people find their work meaningful and the role that leaders can play in this process. The research discussed in this article aimed to uncover how and why people find their work meaningful. Meaningfulness, perhaps unsurprisingly, was often associated with a sense of pride and achievement at a job well done, whether they were professionals or manual workers. Those who could see that they had fulfilled their potential, or who found their work creative, absorbing, The research suggests that, contrary to what we may have thought, meaningfulness is not always a positive experience. In fact, those moments when people found their work meaningful tended to be far richer and more challenging than times when they felt simply motivated, engaged, or happy. The experience of coping with these challenging conditions led to a sense of meaningfulness far greater than they would have experienced dealing with straightforward, everyday situations. A sense of meaningfulness arose in an episodic rather than a sustained way. These particular features of meaningful work suggest that the organizational task of helping people find meaning in their work is complex and profound, going far beyond the relative superficialities of satisfaction or engagement and almost never related to ones employer or manager.
