the meaning of work essay

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What Makes Work Meaningful — Or Meaningless

New research offers insights into what gives work meaning — as well as into common management mistakes that can leave employees feeling that their work is meaningless.

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Meaningful work is something we all want. The psychiatrist Viktor Frankl famously described how the innate human quest for meaning is so strong that, even in the direst circumstances, people seek out their purpose in life. 1 More recently, researchers have shown meaningfulness to be more important to employees than any other aspect of work, including pay and rewards, opportunities for promotion, or working conditions. 2 Meaningful work can be highly motivational, leading to improved performance, commitment, and satisfaction. 3 But, so far, surprisingly little research has explored where and how people find their work meaningful and the role that leaders can play in this process. 4

We interviewed 135 people working in 10 very different occupations and asked them to tell us stories about incidents or times when they found their work to be meaningful and, conversely, times when they asked themselves, “What’s the point of doing this job?” We expected to find that meaningfulness would be similar to other work-related attitudes, such as engagement or commitment, in that it would arise purely in response to situations within the work environment. However, we found that, unlike these other attitudes, meaningfulness tended to be intensely personal and individual; 5 it was often revealed to employees as they reflected on their work and its wider contribution to society in ways that mattered to them as individuals. People tended to speak of their work as meaningful in relation to thoughts or memories of significant family members such as parents or children, bridging the gap between work and the personal realm. We also expected meaningfulness to be a relatively enduring state of mind experienced by individuals toward their work; instead, our interviewees talked of unplanned or unexpected moments during which they found their work deeply meaningful.

We were anticipating that our data would show that the meaningfulness experienced by employees in relation to their work was clearly associated with actions taken by managers, such that, for example, transformational leaders would have followers who found their work meaningful, whereas transactional leaders would not. 6 Instead, our research showed that quality of leadership received virtually no mention when people described meaningful moments at work, but poor management was the top destroyer of meaningfulness.

We also expected to find a clear link between the factors that drove up levels of meaningfulness and those that eroded them. Instead, we found that meaningfulness appeared to be driven up and decreased by different factors. Whereas our interviewees tended to find meaningfulness for themselves rather than it being mandated by their managers, we discovered that if employers want to destroy that sense of meaningfulness, that was far more easily achieved. The feeling of “Why am I bothering to do this?” strikes people the instant a meaningless moment arises, and it strikes people hard. If meaningfulness is a delicate flower that requires careful nurturing, think of someone trampling over that flower in a pair of steel-toed boots. Avoiding the destruction of meaning while nurturing an ecosystem generative of feelings of meaningfulness emerged as the key leadership challenge.

The Five Qualities of Meaningful Work

Our research aimed to uncover how and why people find their work meaningful. (See “About the Research.”) For our interviewees, 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, and interesting, tended to perceive their work as more meaningful than others. Equally, receiving praise, recognition, or acknowledgment from others mattered a great deal. 7 These factors alone were not enough to render work meaningful, however. 8 Our study also revealed five unexpected features of meaningful work; in these, we find clues that might explain the fragile and intangible nature of meaningfulness.

1. Self-Transcendent

Individuals tended to experience their work as meaningful when it mattered to others more than just to themselves. In this way, meaningful work is self-transcendent. Although it is not a well-known fact, the famous motivation theorist Abraham Maslow positioned self-transcendence at the apex of his pyramid of human motivation, situating it beyond even self-actualization in importance. 9 People did not just talk about themselves when they talked about meaningful work; they talked about the impact or relevance their work had for other individuals, groups, or the wider environment. For example, a garbage collector explained how he found his work meaningful at the “tipping point” at the end of the day when refuse was sent to recycling. This was the time he could see how his work contributed to creating a clean environment for his grandchildren and for future generations. An academic described how she found her work meaningful when she saw her students graduate at the commencement ceremony, a tangible sign of how her own hard work had helped others succeed. A priest talked about the uplifting and inspiring experience of bringing an entire community together around the common goal of a church restoration project.

2. Poignant

The experience of meaningful work can be poignant rather than purely euphoric. 10 People often found their work to be full of meaning at moments associated with mixed, uncomfortable, or even painful thoughts and feelings, not just a sense of unalloyed joy and happiness. People often cried in our interviews when they talked about the times when they found their work meaningful. The current emphasis on positive psychology has led us to focus on trying to make employees happy, engaged, and enthused throughout the working day. Psychologist Barbara Held refers to the current pressure to “accentuate the positive” as the “tyranny of the positive attitude.” 11 Traditionally, meaningfulness has been linked with such positive attributes.

Our research suggests that, contrary to what we may have thought, meaningfulness is not always a positive experience. 12 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 most vivid examples of this came from nurses who described moments of profound meaningfulness when they were able to use their professional skills and knowledge to ease the passing of patients at the end of their lives. Lawyers often talked about working hard for extended periods, sometimes years, for their clients and winning cases that led to life-changing outcomes. Participants in several of the occupational groups found moments of meaningfulness when they had triumphed in difficult circumstances or had solved a complex, intractable problem. 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.

3. Episodic

A sense of meaningfulness arose in an episodic rather than a sustained way. It seemed that no one could find their work consistently meaningful, but rather that an awareness that work was meaningful arose at peak times that were generative of strong experiences. For example, a university professor talked of the euphoric experience of feeling “like a rock star” at the end of a successful lecture. One actor we spoke to summed this feeling up well: “My God, I’m actually doing what I dreamt I could do; that’s kind of amazing.” Clearly, sentiments such as these are not sustainable over the course of even one single working day, let alone a longer period, but rather come and go over one’s working life, perhaps rarely arising. Nevertheless, these peak experiences have a profound effect on individuals, are highly memorable, and become part of their life narratives.

Meaningful moments such as these were not forced or managed. Only in a few instances did people tell us that an awareness of their work as meaningful arose directly through the actions of organizational leaders or managers. Conservation stonemasons talked of the significance of carving their “banker’s mark” or mason’s signature into the stone before it was placed into a cathedral structure, knowing that the stone might be uncovered hundreds of years in the future by another mason who would recognize the work as theirs. They felt they were “part of history.” One soldier described how he realized how meaningful his work was when he reflected on his quick thinking in setting off the warning sirens in a combat situation, ensuring that no one at the camp was injured in the ensuing rocket attack. Sales assistants talked about times when they were able to help others, such as an occasion when a customer passed out in one store and the clerk was able to support her until she regained consciousness. Memorable moments such as these contain high levels of emotion and personal relevance, and thus become redolent of the symbolic meaningfulness of work.

4. Reflective

In the instances cited above, it was often only when we asked the interviewees to recount a time when they found their work meaningful that they developed a conscious awareness of the significance of these experiences. Meaningfulness was rarely experienced in the moment, but rather in retrospect and on reflection when people were able to see their completed work and make connections between their achievements and a wider sense of life meaning.

One of the entrepreneurs we interviewed talked about the time when he was switching the lights out after his company’s Christmas party and paused to reflect back over the year on what he and his employees had achieved together. Garbage collectors explained how they were able to find their work meaningful when they finished cleaning a street and stopped to look back at their work. In doing this, they reflected on how the tangible work of street sweeping contributed to the cleanliness of the environment as a whole. One academic talked about research he had done for many years that seemed fairly meaningless at the time, but 20 years later provided the technological solution for touch-screen technology. The experience of meaningfulness is therefore often a thoughtful, retrospective act rather than just a spontaneous emotional response in the moment, although people may be aware of a rush of good feelings at the time. You are unlikely to witness someone talking about how meaningful they find their job during their working day. For most of the people we spoke to, the discussions we had about meaningful work were the first time they had ever talked about these experiences.

5. Personal

Other feelings about work, such as engagement or satisfaction, tend to be just that: feelings about work. Work that is meaningful, on the other hand, is often understood by people not just in the context of their work but also in the wider context of their personal life experiences. We found that managers and even organizations actually mattered relatively little at these times. One musician described his profound sense of meaningfulness when his father attended a performance of his for the first time and finally came to appreciate and understand the musician’s work. A priest was able to find a sense of meaning in her work when she could relate the harrowing personal experiences of a member of her congregation to her own life events, and used that understanding to help and support her congregant at a time of personal tragedy. An entrepreneur’s motivation to start his own business included the desire to make his grandfather proud of him. The customary dinner held to mark the end of a soldier’s service became imbued with meaning for one soldier because it was shared with family members who were there to hear her army stories. One lawyer described how she found her work meaningful when her services were recommended by friends and family and she felt trusted and valued in both spheres of her life. A garbage collector described the time when the community’s water supply became contaminated and he was asked to work on distributing water to local residents; that was meaningful, as he could see how he was helping vulnerable neighbors.

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Moments of especially profound meaningfulness arose when these experiences coalesced with the sense of a job well done, one recognized and appreciated by others. One example of many came from a conservation stonemason who described how his work became most meaningful to him when the restoration of a section of the cathedral he had been working on for years was unveiled, the drapes and scaffolding withdrawn, and the work of the craftsmen celebrated. This event involved all the masons and other trades such as carpenters and glaziers, as well as the cathedral’s religious leaders, members of the public, and local dignitaries. “Everyone goes, ‘Doesn’t it look amazing?’” he said. “That’s the moment you realize you’ve saved something and ensured its future; you’ve given part of the cathedral back to the local community.”

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 one’s employer or manager.

Meaninglessness: The Seven Deadly Sins

What factors serve to destroy the fragile sense of meaningfulness that individuals find in their work? Interestingly, the factors that seem to drive a sense of meaninglessness and futility around work were very different from those associated with meaningfulness. The experiences that actively led people to ask, “Why am I doing this?” were generally a function of how people were treated by managers and leaders. Interviewees noted seven things that leaders did to create a feeling of meaninglessness (listed in order from most to least grievous).

1. Disconnect people from their values. Although individuals did not talk much about value congruence as a promoter of meaningfulness, they often talked about a disconnect between their own values and those of their employer or work group as the major cause of a sense of futility and meaninglessness. 13 This issue was raised most frequently as a source of meaninglessness in work. A recurring theme was the tension between an organizational focus on the bottom line and the individual’s focus on the quality or professionalism of work. One stonemason commented that he found the organization’s focus on cost “deeply depressing.” Academics spoke of their administrations being most interested in profits and the avoidance of litigation, instead of intellectual integrity and the provision of the best possible education. Nurses spoke despairingly of being forced to send patients home before they were ready in order to free up bed space. Lawyers talked of a focus on profits rather than on helping clients.

2. Take your employees for granted. Lack of recognition for hard work by organizational leaders was frequently cited as invoking a feeling of pointlessness. Academics talked about department heads who didn’t acknowledge their research or teaching successes; sales assistants and priests talked of bosses who did not thank them for taking on additional work. A stonemason described the way managers would not even say “good morning” to him, and lawyers described how, despite putting in extremely long hours, they were still criticized for not moving through their work quickly enough. Feeling unrecognized, unacknowledged, and unappreciated by line or senior managers was often cited in the interviews as a major reason people found their work pointless.

3. Give people pointless work to do. We found that individuals had a strong sense of what their job should involve and how they should be spending their time, and that a feeling of meaninglessness arose when they were required to perform tasks that did not fit that sense. Nurses, academics, artists, and clergy all cited bureaucratic tasks and form filling not directly related to their core purpose as a source of futility and pointlessness. Stonemasons and retail assistants cited poorly planned projects where they were left to “pick up the pieces” by senior managers. A retail assistant described the pointless task of changing the shop layout one week on instructions from the head office, only to be told to change it back again a week later.

4. Treat people unfairly. Unfairness and injustice can make work feel meaningless. Forms of unfairness ranged from distributive injustices, such as one stonemason who was told he could not have a pay raise for several years due to a shortage of money but saw his colleague being given a raise, to freelance musicians being asked to write a film score without payment. Procedural injustices included bullying and lack of opportunities for career progression.

5. Override people’s better judgment. Quite often, a sense of meaninglessness was connected with a feeling of disempowerment or disenfranchisement over how work was done. One nurse, for example, described how a senior colleague required her to perform a medical intervention that was not procedurally correct, and how she felt obliged to complete this even against her better judgment. Lawyers talked of being forced to cut corners to finish cases quickly. Stonemasons described how being forced to “hurry up” using modern tools and techniques went against their sense of historic craft practices. One priest summed up the role of the manager by saying, “People can feel empowered or disempowered by the way you run things.” When people felt they were not being listened to, that their opinions and experience did not count, or that they could not have a voice, then they were more likely to find their work meaningless.

6. Disconnect people from supportive relationships. Feelings of isolation or marginalization at work were linked with meaninglessness. This could occur through deliberate ostracism on the part of managers, or just through feeling disconnected from coworkers and teams. Most interviewees talked of the importance of camaraderie and relations with coworkers for their sense of meaningfulness. Entrepreneurs talked about their sense of loneliness and meaninglessness during the startup phase of their business, and the growing sense of meaningfulness that arose as the business developed and involved more people with whom they could share the successes. Creative artists spoke of times when they were unable to reach out to an audience through their art as times of profound meaninglessness.

7. Put people at risk of physical or emotional harm. Many jobs entail physical or emotional risks, and those taking on this kind of work generally appreciate and understand the choices they have made. However, unnecessary em> exposure to risk was associated with lost meaningfulness. Nurses cited feelings of vulnerability when left alone with aggressive patients; garbage collectors talked of avoidable accidents they had experienced at work; and soldiers described exposure to extreme weather conditions without the appropriate gear.

These seven destroyers emerged as highly damaging to an individual’s sense of his or her work as meaningful. When several of these factors were present, meaningfulness was considerably lower.

Cultivating an Ecosystem For Meaningfulness

In the 1960s, Frederick Herzberg showed that the factors that give rise to a sense of job satisfaction are not the same as those that lead to feelings of dissatisfaction. 14 It seems that something similar is true for meaningfulness. Our research shows that meaningfulness is largely something that individuals find for themselves in their work, 15 but meaninglessness is something that organizations and leaders can actively cause. Clearly, the first challenge to building a satisfied workforce is to avoid the seven deadly sins that drive up levels of meaninglessness.

Given that meaningfulness is such an intensely personal and individual experience that is interpreted by individuals in the context of their wider lives, can organizations create an environment that cultivates high levels of meaningfulness? The key to meaningful work is to create an ecosystem that encourages people to thrive. As other scholars have argued, 16 efforts to control and proscribe the meaningfulness that individuals inherently find in their work can paradoxically lead to its loss.

Our interviews and a wider reading of the literature on meaningfulness point to four elements that organizations can address that will help foster an integrated sense of holistic meaningfulness for individual employees. 17 (See “The Elements of a Meaningfulness Ecosystem.”)

1. Organizational Meaningfulness

At the macro level, meaningfulness is more likely to thrive when employees understand the broad purpose of the organization. 18 This purpose should be formulated in such a way that it focuses on the positive contribution of the organization to the wider society or the environment. This involves articulating the following:

• What does the organization aim to contribute? What is its “core business”?
• How does the organization aspire to go about achieving this? What values underpin its way of doing business?

This needs to be done in a genuine and thoughtful way. People are highly adept at spotting hypocrisy, like the nurses who were told their hospital put patients first but were also told to discharge people as quickly as possible. The challenge lies not only in articulating and conveying a clear message about organizational purpose, but also in not undermining meaningfulness by generating a sense of artificiality and manipulation. 19

Reaching employees in ways that make sense to them can be a challenge. A clue for addressing this comes from the garbage collectors we interviewed. One described to us how the workers used to be told by management that the waste they returned to the depot would be recycled, but this message came across as highly abstract. Then the company started putting pictures of the items that were made from recycled waste on the side of the garbage trucks. This led to a more tangible realization of what the waste was used for. 20

2. Job Meaningfulness

The vast majority of interviewees found their work meaningful, whether they were musicians, sales assistants, lawyers, or garbage collectors. Studies have shown that meaning is so important to people that they actively go about recrafting their jobs to enhance their sense of meaningfulness. 21 Often, this recrafting involves extending the impact or significance of their role for others. One example of this was sales assistants in a large retail store who listened to lonely elderly customers.

Organizations can encourage people to see their work as meaningful by demonstrating how jobs fit with the organization’s broader purpose or serve a wider, societal benefit. The priests we spoke to often explained how their ministry work in their local parishes contributed to the wider purpose of the church as a whole. In the same way, managers can be encouraged to show employees what their particular jobs contribute to the broader whole and how what they do will help others or create a lasting legacy. 22

Alongside this, we need to challenge the notion that meaningfulness can only arise from positive work experiences. Challenging, problematic, sad, or poignant 23 jobs have the potential to be richly generative of new insights and meaningfulness, and overlooking this risks upsetting the delicate balance of the meaningfulness ecosystem. Providing support to people at the end of their lives is a harrowing experience for nurses and clergy, yet they cited these times as among the most meaningful. The task for leaders is to acknowledge the problematic or negative side of some jobs and to provide appropriate support for employees doing them, yet to reveal in an honest way the benefits and broader contribution that such jobs make. 24

3. Task Meaningfulness

Given that jobs typically comprise a wide range of tasks, it stands to reason that some of these tasks will constitute a greater source of meaningfulness than others. 25 To illustrate, a priest will have responsibility for leading acts of worship, supporting sick and vulnerable individuals, developing community relations and activities, and probably a wide range of other tasks such as raising funds, managing assistants and volunteers, ensuring the upkeep of church buildings, and so on. In fact, the priests were the most hard-working group that we spoke to, with the majority working a seven-day week on a bewildering range of activities. Even much simpler jobs will involve several different tasks. One of the challenges facing organizations is to help people understand how the individual tasks they perform contribute to their job and to the organization as a whole.

When individuals described some of the sources of meaninglessness they faced in their work, they often talked about how to come to terms with the tedious, repetitive, or indeed purposeless work that is part of almost every job. For example, the stonemasons described how the first few months of their training involved learning to “square the stone,” which involves chiseling a large block of stone into a perfectly formed square with just a few millimeters of tolerance on each plane. As soon as they finished one, they had to start another, repeating this over and over until the master mason was satisfied that they had perfected the task. Only then were they allowed to work on more interesting and intricate carvings. Several described their feelings of boredom and futility; one said that he had taken 18 attempts to get the squaring of the stone correct. “It feels like you are never ever going to get better,” he recalled. Many felt like giving up at this point, fearing that stonemasonry was not for them. It was only in later years, as they looked back on this period in their working lives, that they could see the point of this detailed level of training as the first step on their path to more challenging and rewarding work.

Filling out forms, cited earlier, is another good example of meaningless work. Individuals in a wide range of occupations all reported that what they perceived as “mindless bureaucracy” sapped the meaningfulness from their work. For instance, most of the academics we spoke to were highly negative about the amount of form filling the job entailed. One said, “I was dropping spreadsheets into a huge black hole.”

Where organizations successfully managed the context within which these necessary but tedious tasks were undertaken, the tasks came to be perceived not exactly as meaningful, but equally as not meaningless. Another academic said, “I’m pretty good with tedious work, as long as it’s got a larger meaning.”

4. Interactional Meaningfulness

There is widespread agreement that people find their work meaningful in an interactional context in two ways: 26 First, when they are in contact with others who benefit from their work; and, second, in an environment of supportive interpersonal relationships. 27 As we saw earlier, negative interactional experiences — such as bullying by a manager, lack of respect or recognition, or forcing reduced contact with the beneficiaries of work — all drive up a sense of meaninglessness, since the employee receives negative cues from others about the value they place on the employee’s work. 28 The challenge here is for leaders to create a supportive, respectful, and inclusive work climate among colleagues, between employees and managers, and between organizational staff and work beneficiaries. It also involves recognizing the importance of creating space in the working day for meaningful interactions where employees are able to give and receive positive feedback, communicate a sense of shared values and belonging, and appreciate how their work has positive impacts on others.

Not surprisingly, the most striking examples of the impact of interactional meaningfulness on people came from the caring occupations included in our study: nurses and clergy. In these cases, there was very frequent contact between the individual and the direct beneficiaries of his or her work, most often in the context of supporting and healing people at times of great vulnerability in their lives. Witnessing firsthand, and hearing directly, about how their work had changed people’s lives created a work environment conducive to meaningfulness. Although prior research 29 has similarly highlighted the importance of such direct contact for enhancing work’s meaningfulness, we also found that past or future generations, or imagined future beneficiaries, could play a role. This was the case for the stonemasons who felt connected to past and future generations of masons through their bankers’ marks on the back of the stones and for the garbage collectors who could envisage how their work contributed to the living environment for future generations.

Holistic Meaningfulness

The four elements of the meaningfulness ecosystem combine to enable a state of holistic meaningfulness, where the synergistic benefits of multiple sources of meaningfulness can be realized. 30 Although it is possible for someone to describe meaningful moments in terms of any one of the subsystems, meaningfulness is enriched when more than one or all of these are present. 31 A sales assistant, for example, described how she had been working with a team on the refurbishment of her store: “We’d all been there until 2 a.m., working together moving stuff, everyone had contributed and stayed late and helped, it was a good time. We were exhausted but we still laughed and then the next morning we were all bright in our uniforms, it was a lovely feeling, just like a little family coming together. The day [the store] opened, it did bring tears to my eyes. We had a little gathering and a speech; the managers said ‘thank you’ to everybody because everyone had contributed.”

Finding work meaningful is an experience that reaches beyond the workplace and into the realm of the individual’s wider personal life. It can be a very profound, moving, and even uncomfortable experience. It arises rarely and often in unexpected ways; it gives people pause for thought — not just concerning work but what life itself is all about. In experiencing work as meaningful, we cease to be workers or employees and relate as human beings, reaching out in a bond of common humanity to others. For organizations seeking to manage meaningfulness, the ethical and moral responsibility is great, since they are bridging the gap between work and personal life.

Yet the benefits for individuals and organizations that accrue from meaningful workplaces can be immense. Organizations that succeed in this are more likely to attract, retain, and motivate the employees they need to build sustainably for the future, and to create the kind of workplaces where human beings can thrive.

About the Authors

Catherine Bailey is a professor in the department of business and management at the University of Sussex in Brighton, U.K. Adrian Madden is a senior lecturer in the department of human resources and organizational behavior at the business school of the University of Greenwich in London.

1. V.E. Frankl, “Man’s Search For Meaning” (Boston: Beacon Press, 1959).

2. W.F. Cascio, “Changes in Workers, Work, and Organizations,” vol. 12, chap. 16 in “Handbook of Psychology,” ed. W. Borman, R. Klimoski, and D. Ilgen (New York: Wiley, 2003).

3. M.G. Pratt and B.E. Ashforth, “Fostering Meaningfulness in Working and at Work,” in “Positive Organizational Scholarship,” ed. K.S. Cameron, J.E. Dutton, and R.E. Quinn (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2003).

4. C. Bailey, R. Yeoman, A. Madden, M. Thompson, and G. Kerridge, “A Narrative Evidence Synthesis of Meaningful Work: Progress and Research Agenda” (paper to be presented at the U.S. Academy of Management Conference, Anaheim, California, Aug. 5-9, 2016); and M.G. Pratt, C. Pradies, and D.A. Lepisto, “Doing Well, Doing Good, and Doing With: Organizational Practices For Effectively Cultivating Meaningful Work,” in “Purpose and Meaning in the Workplace,” ed. B.J. Dik, Z.S. Byrne, and M.F. Steger (Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, 2013), 173-196.

5. We have defined meaningful work as arising “when an individual perceives an authentic connection between their work and a broader transcendent life purpose beyond the self.” See C. Bailey and A. Madden, “Time Reclaimed: Temporality and the Experience of Meaningful Work,” Work, Employment, & Society (October 2015), doi: 10.1177/0950017015604100. Meaningfulness is therefore different from engagement, which is defined as a positive work-related attitude comprising vigor, dedication, and absorption. See W.B. Schaufeli, “What Is Engagement?,” in “Employee Engagement in Theory and Practice,” ed. C. Truss, K. Alfes, R. Delbridge, A. Shantz, and E. Soane (London: Routledge, 2014), 15-35.

6. K. Arnold, N. Turner, J. Barling, E.K. Kelloway, and M.C. McKee, “Transformational Leadership and Psychological Wellbeing: The Mediating Role of Meaningful Work,” Journal of Occupational Health Psychology 12, no. 3 (July 2007): 193-203.

7. M. Lips-Wiersma and S. Wright, “Measuring the Meaning of Meaningful Work: Development and Validation of the Comprehensive Meaningful Work Scale,” Group & Organization Management 37, no. 5 (October 2012): 665-685.

8. B.D. Rosso, K.H. Dekas, and A. Wrzesniewski, “On the Meaning of Work: A Theoretical Integration and Review,” Research in Organizational Behavior 30 (2010): 91-127.

9. A. Maslow, “Motivation and Personality” (New York: Harper and Row, 1954).

10. H. Ersner-Hershfield, J.A. Mikels, S.J. Sullivan, and L.L. Carstensen, “Poignancy: Mixed Emotional Experience in the Face of Meaningful Endings,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 94, no. 1 (January 2008): 158-167.

11. B.S. Held, “The Tyranny of the Positive Attitude in America: Observation and Speculation,” Journal of Clinical Psychology 58, no. 9 (September 2002): 965-991.

12. J.S. Bunderson and J.A. Thompson, “The Call of the Wild: Zookeepers, Callings, and the Double-Edged Sword of Deeply Meaningful Work,” Administrative Science Quarterly 54, no.1 (March 2009): 32-57.

13. S. Cartwright and N. Holmes, “The Meaning of Work: The Challenge of Regaining Employee Engagement and Reducing Cynicism,” Human Resource Management Review 16, no. 2 (June 2006): 199-208.

14. F. Herzberg, “The Motivation-Hygiene Concept and Problems of Manpower,” Personnel Administrator 27, no. 1 (1964): 3-7.

15. M. Lips-Wiersma and L. Morris, “Discriminating Between ‘Meaningful Work’ and the ‘Management of Meaning,’” Journal of Business Ethics 88, no. 3 (September 2009): 491-511.

18. N. Chalofsky, “Meaningful Workplaces” (San Francisco: Wiley, 2010); and F.O. Walumbwa, A.L. Christensen, and M.K. Muchiri, “Transformational Leadership and Meaningful Work,” in Dik, Byrne, and Steger, “Purpose and Meaning,” 197-215.

19. J.M. Podolny, R. Khurana, and M. Hill-Popper, “Revisiting the Meaning of Leadership,” Research in Organizational Behavior 26 (2004), doi:10.1016/S0191-3085(04)26001-4.

20. Organizational theorist Marya L. Besharov highlights the challenge of managing in an organizational setting where employees have differing views over which values matter the most and points out the “dark side” of seeking to impose a unitary organizational ideology on employees. Based on our research, we take the view here that in general terms employees welcome a broad statement of organizational purpose and values that gives them the space to interpret it in a way that is meaningful for them. See M.L. Besharov, “The Relational Ecology of Identification: How Organizational Identification Emerges When Individuals Hold Divergent Values,” Academy of Management Journal 57, no. 5 (October 2014): 1485-1512.

21. A. Wrzesniewski and J.E. Dutton, “Crafting a Job: Revisioning Employees as Active Crafters of Their Work,” Academy of Management Review 26, no. 2 (April 2001): 179-201; and J.M. Berg, J.E. Dutton, and A. Wrzesniewski, “Job Crafting and Meaningful Work,” in Dik, Byrne, and Steger, “Purpose and Meaning,” 81-104.

22. B.E. Ashforth and G.E. Kreiner, “Profane or Profound? Finding Meaning in Dirty Work,” in Dik, Byrne, and Steger, “Purpose and Meaning,” 127-150.

23. Held, “Tyranny of the Positive Attitude”; and Ersner-Hershfield et al., “Poignancy: Mixed Emotional Experience.”

24. Lips-Wiersma and Morris, “Discriminating Between ‘Meaningful Work.’”

25. A. Grant, “Relational Job Design and the Motivation to Make a Prosocial Difference,” Academy of Management Review 32, no. 2 (2007): 393-417.

26. Lips-Wiersma and Wright, “Measuring the Meaning.”

27. A. Grant, “Leading With Meaning: Beneficiary Contact, Prosocial Impact, and the Performance Effects of Transformational Leadership,” Academy of Management Journal 55, no. 2 (April 2012): 458-476.

28. A. Wrzesniewski, J.E. Dutton, and G. Debebe, “Interpersonal Sensemaking and the Meaning of Work,” Research in Organizational Behavior 25 (2003): 93-135.

29. Grant, “Leading With Meaning.”

30. Lips-Wiersma and Wright, “Measuring the Meaning.”

i. Bailey and Madden, “Time Reclaimed: Temporality and the Experience.”

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Essays About Work: 7 Examples and 8 Prompts

If you want to write well-researched essays about work, check out our guide of helpful essay examples and writing prompts for this topic.

Whether employed or self-employed, we all need to work to earn a living. Work could provide a source of purpose for some but also stress for many. The causes of stress could be an unmanageable workload, low pay, slow career development, an incompetent boss, and companies that do not care about your well-being.  Essays about work  can help us understand how to achieve a work/life balance for long-term happiness.

Work can still be a happy place to develop essential skills such as leadership and teamwork. If we adopt the right mindset, we can focus on situations we can improve and avoid stressing ourselves over situations we have no control over. We should also be free to speak up against workplace issues and abuses to defend our labor rights. Check out our  essay writing topics  for more.

5 Examples of Essays About Work

1.  when the future of work means always looking for your next job by bruce horovitz, 2. ‘quiet quitting’ isn’t the solution for burnout by rebecca vidra, 3. the science of why we burn out and don’t have to by joe robinson , 4. how to manage your career in a vuca world by murali murthy, 5. the challenges of regulating the labor market in developing countries by gordon betcherman, 6. creating the best workplace on earth by rob goffee and gareth jones, 7. employees seek personal value and purpose at work. be prepared to deliver by jordan turner, 8 writing prompts on essays about work, 1. a dream work environment, 2. how is school preparing you for work, 3. the importance of teamwork at work, 4. a guide to find work for new graduates, 5. finding happiness at work, 6. motivating people at work, 7. advantages and disadvantages of working from home, 8. critical qualities you need to thrive at work.

“For a host of reasons—some for a higher salary, others for improved benefits, and many in search of better company culture—America’s workforce is constantly looking for its next gig.”

A perennial search for a job that fulfills your sense of purpose has been an emerging trend in the work landscape in recent years. Yet, as human resource managers scramble to minimize employee turnover, some still believe there will still be workers who can exit a company through a happy retirement. You might also be interested in these  essays about unemployment .

“…[L]et’s creatively collaborate on ways to re-establish our own sense of value in our institutions while saying yes only to invitations that nourish us instead of sucking up more of our energy.”

Quiet quitting signals more profound issues underlying work, such as burnout or the bosses themselves. It is undesirable in any workplace, but to have it in school, among faculty members, spells doom as the future of the next generation is put at stake. In this essay, a teacher learns how to keep from burnout and rebuild a sense of community that drew her into the job in the first place.

“We don’t think about managing the demands that are pushing our buttons, we just keep reacting to them on autopilot on a route I call the burnout treadmill. Just keep going until the paramedics arrive.”

Studies have shown the detrimental health effects of stress on our mind, emotions and body. Yet we still willingly take on the treadmill to stress, forgetting our boundaries and wellness. It is time to normalize seeking help from our superiors to resolve burnout and refuse overtime and heavy workloads.

“As we start to emerge from the pandemic, today’s workplace demands a different kind of VUCA career growth. One that’s Versatile, Uplifting, Choice-filled and Active.”

The only thing constant in work is change. However, recent decades have witnessed greater work volatility where tech-oriented people and creative minds flourish the most. The essay provides tips for applying at work daily to survive and even thrive in the VUCA world. You might also be interested in these  essays about motivation .

“Ultimately, the biggest challenge in regulating labor markets in developing countries is what to do about the hundreds of millions of workers (or even more) who are beyond the reach of formal labor market rules and social protections.”

The challenge in regulating work is balancing the interest of employees to have dignified work conditions and for employers to operate at the most reasonable cost. But in developing countries, the difficulties loom larger, with issues going beyond equal pay to universal social protection coverage and monitoring employers’ compliance.

“Suppose you want to design the best company on earth to work for. What would it be like? For three years, we’ve been investigating this question by asking hundreds of executives in surveys and in seminars all over the world to describe their ideal organization.”

If you’ve ever wondered what would make the best workplace, you’re not alone. In this essay, Jones looks at how employers can create a better workplace for employees by using surveys and interviews. The writer found that individuality and a sense of support are key to creating positive workplace environments where employees are comfortable.

“Bottom line: People seek purpose in their lives — and that includes work. The more an employer limits those things that create this sense of purpose, the less likely employees will stay at their positions.”

In this essay, Turner looks at how employees seek value in the workplace. This essay dives into how, as humans, we all need a purpose. If we can find purpose in our work, our overall happiness increases. So, a value and purpose-driven job role can create a positive and fruitful work environment for both workers and employers.

In this essay, talk about how you envision yourself as a professional in the future. You can be as creative as to describe your workplace, your position, and your colleagues’ perception of you. Next, explain why this is the line of work you dream of and what you can contribute to society through this work. Finally, add what learning programs you’ve signed up for to prepare your skills for your dream job. For more, check out our list of simple essays topics for intermediate writers .

For your essay, look deeply into how your school prepares the young generation to be competitive in the future workforce. If you want to go the extra mile, you can interview students who have graduated from your school and are now professionals. Ask them about the programs or practices in your school that they believe have helped mold them better at their current jobs.

In a workplace where colleagues compete against each other, leaders could find it challenging to cultivate a sense of cooperation and teamwork. So, find out what creative activities companies can undertake to encourage teamwork across teams and divisions. For example, regular team-building activities help strengthen professional bonds while assisting workers to recharge their minds.

Finding a job after receiving your undergraduate diploma can be full of stress, pressure, and hard work. Write an essay that handholds graduate students in drafting their resumes and preparing for an interview. You may also recommend the top job market platforms that match them with their dream work. You may also ask recruitment experts for tips on how graduates can make a positive impression in job interviews.

Creating a fun and happy workplace may seem impossible. But there has been a flurry of efforts in the corporate world to keep workers happy. Why? To make them more productive. So, for your essay, gather research on what practices companies and policy-makers should adopt to help workers find meaning in their jobs. For example, how often should salary increases occur? You may also focus on what drives people to quit jobs that raise money. If it’s not the financial package that makes them satisfied, what does? Discuss these questions with your readers for a compelling essay.

Motivation could scale up workers’ productivity, efficiency, and ambition for higher positions and a longer tenure in your company. Knowing which method of motivation best suits your employees requires direct managers to know their people and find their potential source of intrinsic motivation. For example, managers should be able to tell whether employees are having difficulties with their tasks to the point of discouragement or find the task too easy to boredom.

A handful of managers have been worried about working from home for fears of lowering productivity and discouraging collaborative work. Meanwhile, those who embrace work-from-home arrangements are beginning to see the greater value and benefits of giving employees greater flexibility on when and where to work. So first, draw up the pros and cons of working from home. You can also interview professionals working or currently working at home. Finally, provide a conclusion on whether working from home can harm work output or boost it.

Identifying critical skills at work could depend on the work applied. However, there are inherent values and behavioral competencies that recruiters demand highly from employees. List the top five qualities a professional should possess to contribute significantly to the workplace. For example, being proactive is a valuable skill because workers have the initiative to produce without waiting for the boss to prod them.

If you need help with grammar, our guide to  grammar and syntax  is a good start to learning more. We also recommend taking the time to  improve the readability score  of your essays before publishing or submitting them.

Meet Rachael, the editor at Become a Writer Today. With years of experience in the field, she is passionate about language and dedicated to producing high-quality content that engages and informs readers. When she's not editing or writing, you can find her exploring the great outdoors, finding inspiration for her next project.

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The why of work: purpose and meaning really do matter.

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People are more likely to thrive when their work has clear purpose and meaning.

It’s a question all of us should ask ourselves. Why do we do what we do? In particular, why do we do the work that, for many of us, occupies most of our waking hours for our entire adult lives?

Ralph Waldo Emerson left us a quote worthy of one of those inspirational wall posters: “The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”

That thought may feel warm and fuzzy, but the question remains: Why do we do the work we do?

David and Wendy Ulrich address that and many related issues in The Why of Work: How Great Leaders Build Abundant Organizations That Win .

David Ulrich, professor of business at the University of Michigan, has authored or coauthored more than 30 books that have shaped the human resources profession and the field of leadership development. Wendy Ulrich is a psychologist, educator and writer with a passion for helping people create healthy relationships and meaning-rich lives.

I visited with this dynamic duo to explore their thinking on issues affecting engagement, productivity, and—yes—purpose and meaning in the workplace.

Rodger Dean Duncan: In the context of meaning in the workplace, how do you define abundance?

David and Wendy Ulrich

David Ulrich: Abundance is to have a fullness (e.g., an abundant harvest) or to live life to its fullest (e.g., an abundant life).

An abundant organization enables its employees to be completely fulfilled by finding meaning and purpose from their work experience. This meaning enables employees to have personal hope for the future and create value for customers and investors. When we ask people how the feel about their work, we can quickly get a sense of how work helps them fulfill the things that matter most in their lives.

Duncan: You point out that meaning and abundance are more about what we do with what we have than about what we have to begin with or what we accumulate. How can a leader persuade people to adopt that viewpoint and to “operationalize” it in the workplace?

Wendy Ulrich: Clearly this won’t fly if a leader is trying to talk people into ignoring bad working conditions when something could be done to change them. But I learned long ago with therapy clients that their misery often had less to do with their circumstances and more to do with what they told themselves those circumstances meant about them. (“This means I’ll never be happy …. my future is hopeless ... people don’t like me ... I’ll never succeed.”) Fortunately, even when we cannot change our circumstances, we do control what we tell ourselves those circumstances mean about us. Checking out what is real, changing the story, seeing a different perspective, or getting creative can turn a problem into an opportunity.

Duncan: How can an organization institutionalize, not merely individualize, abundance and meaning in the workplace?

D. Ulrich: The concept of abundant organizations draws on many diverse literatures related to the employee experience at work: positive psychology, high performing teams, culture, commitment, learning, civility, growth mindset. By distilling these literatures, we identified seven principles of the abundant organization (identity, purpose, relationships/teamwork, positive work environment, personalizing work, resilience/growth, and delight/civility). These principles are institutionalized into organizations by designing and delivering HR practices around people, performance, information, and work that enable organizations to create a personality that outlasts any single individual.

Duncan: You say leaders are meaning makers. In terms of observable behaviors, what does that look like?

W. Ulrich: People find meaning when they see a clear connection between what they highly value and what they spend time doing. That connection is not always obvious, however. Leaders are in a great position to articulate the values a company is trying to enact and to shape the story of how today’s work connects with those values. This means sharing stories of how the company is making a difference for good in the lives of real people, including customers, employees, and communities.

Leaders operationalize that by formally and informally sharing those stories, speaking passionately about what the company stands for and sharing personal lessons learned in that process. Leaders can involve employees in both articulating those values and creating plans to act on them. One way to make those stories come alive is to bring in people who have been helped by the company’s products or services and letting them share their stories. We are usually pretty good at sharing financial data. Often more motivating to employees are stories about human impact.

Open the door to employee engagement.

Duncan: As the story goes, people feel differently about the meaning of their work if they see themselves as bricklayers rather than as building a cathedral to God. What can leaders (and individuals) do to make work more about cathedral-building?

D. Ulrich: There is an old fable of the three bricklayers all working on the same wall. Someone asked the bricklayers, “What you are doing?” The first said “I am laying bricks”; the second bricklayer replied, “I am building a wall”; and the third answered, “I am building a great cathedral for God.” The third had a vision of how the daily tasks of laying bricks fit into a broader, more meaningful purpose. Likewise, employees who envision the outcomes of their daily routines find more meaning from doing them. I am not just presenting a lecture as I teach, but preparing the next generation of business leaders.

Duncan: What advice do you give workers who don’t have a charismatic leader who pushes an abundance agenda? What can they do to flourish?

D. Ulrich: Martin Seligman’s exceptional book Flourish suggests that employees can acquire a most positive outlook on their work by having Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishments (what he calls PERMA). When employees take personal accountability for creating these attributes (which relate to our seven dimensions of abundance) they do not depend on the leader, but themselves for their work experience. Leaders matter to employee experience, but employee responsibility for the experience matters more. Children mature when they no longer depend on parents to provide all their needs. Likewise, mature employees become agents for their own development.

Duncan: In the spirit of the Olympic athlete in Chariots of Fire , how can a person find abundant forms of accomplishment? (Insight, Achievement, Connection, Empowerment)

D. Ulrich: Defining what matters most or what success looks like is an easy question that is not simple to answer. Success varies by person and over time for any individual person. Olympic athletes like Eric Liddell of Chariots of Fire fame, started with success in his achievements (I can run fast enough to win the medal), but then morphed to insight (I run to find the pleasure God granted me), and ultimately to empower others (I can help others run to find their purpose). Likewise, an employee can continually ask “what do I want” and “how do I define success.” These reflection questions help s take personal accountability for their work and personal lives.

Duncan: Gallup research shows that employees who have a best friend at work are seven times more likely to be highly engaged at work than those who don’t. What can be done to create a workplace that fosters those kinds of relationships?

W. Ulrich: Plenty!

• Leaders can model healthy relationships at work.
• They can encourage people to get to know each other by making time, space, and resources available for them to do so.
• They can try to catch people in the act of being nice, thanking and encouraging them.
• They can set up ways to teach and coach people in the skills of good relating, such as good listening, being curious about others, apologizing effectively, controlling anger, and letting go of slights—some of the specific skills people can learn and practice that will help them enjoy others and be easier to like.

People with the skills to create and maintain friendship will likely experience less stress at home, increased effectiveness with customers, and improved communications throughout the organization.

Duncan: What role does personal humility play in a leader’s ability to inspire others and create meaning in the workplace?

W. Ulrich: Recent work by Dacher Keltner at UC Berkeley on the dynamics of power is fascinating in this regard. He found that people are most likely to rise to power when they have qualities like kindness, good listening, concern for the greater good, enthusiasm, focus, high empathy, and humility. He also found that once people are in power positions, those qualities too often take a back seat to self-entitlement, indifference to the plight of others, negative interruptions in conversation, and ignoring even basic politeness.

When a leader manages to hold on to his or her humanity and humility even when in the power seat, modeling the highest ideals we have for ourselves as human beings, others want to join that team. Humility is at the heart of a growth mindset that encourages and models learning instead of defensiveness in the face of setbacks, paving the way for creativity and resilience.

Duncan: Conflict, even if rare, is inevitable in most any work setting. What have you seen as best practices in addressing conflict so the “why” of work is appropriately reinforced?

W. Ulrich: Conflict is not only inevitable, it is valuable, bringing problems to light and different viewpoints to bear on problems. But conflict can also be destructive if not handled with fairness, respect, and good will.

When there’s a problem it’s almost always best to bring it up in a straightforward way directly with the person involved. If we are contemptuous, critical, or cruel we can expect to get defensiveness and anger in return. If we are calm, curious, and compassionate as we try to both explain our point of view and listen to others, conflict can help us get to better outcomes for all. It’s amazing how healing it can be to simply feel genuinely heard and cared about and to receive a respectful apology. Most people will listen if they don’t feel threatened or attacked.

Duncan: How can people find intrinsic value in their work if it’s not readily apparent to them?

W. Ulrich: Take a careful look at your deepest values for how to treat other people (especially in the face of disagreement), what matters most in life, what problems you like to solve or want to solve, or what personal strengths are most meaningful to you to contribute to others. Then actively look for ways to live those values, even in small ways, in the everyday work you do.

Living with meaning and purpose is not easy. It may not make us happy in the moment. It requires self-reflection, effort, getting our hands dirty, and struggling with problems that can make us feel frustrated and inadequate. But when we connect with people, remember humor and playfulness, practice creativity and resilience, and go into work situations with a plan, we’ll find ample opportunities to practice the values and skills that get us closer to what we want our lives to stand for. That’s the intrinsic value of our work.

Duncan: How should leaders serve as models for meaning in the workplace?

D. Ulrich: When we ask workshop participants to identify leaders who shaped their lives, everyone can quickly name someone. These leaders generally model the principles of abundance in their personal lives and work to instill them in others. Leaders who are meaning-makers are acutely aware of how their good intentions need to show up in good behaviors; how their daily interactions need to reflect their personal values; and how their job as a leader is not just to be personally authentic, but to help others develop their authenticity.

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Philosophical Approaches to Work and Labor

Work is a subject with a long philosophical pedigree. Some of the most influential philosophical systems devote considerable attention to questions concerning who should work, how they should work, and why. For example, in the ideally just city outlined in the Republic , Plato proposed a system of labor specialization, according to which individuals are assigned to one of three economic strata, based on their inborn abilities: the laboring or mercantile class, a class of auxiliaries charged with keeping the peace and defending the city, or the ruling class of ‘philosopher-kings’. Such a division of labor, Plato argued, will ensure that the tasks essential to the city’s flourishing will be performed by those most capable of performing them.

In proposing that a just society must concern itself with how work is performed and by whom, Plato acknowledged the centrality of work to social and personal life. Indeed, most adults spend a significant time engaged in work, and many contemporary societies are arguably “employment-centred” (Gorz 2010). In such societies, work is the primary source of income and is ‘normative’ in the sociological sense, i.e., work is expected to be a central feature of day-to-day life, at least for adults.

Arguably then, no phenomenon exerts a greater influence on the quality and conditions of human life than work. Work thus deserves the same level of philosophical scrutiny as other phenomena central to economic activity (for example, markets or property) or collective life (the family, for instance).

The history of philosophy contains an array of divergent perspectives concerning the place of work in human life (Applebaum 1992, Schaff 2001, Budd 2011, Lis and Soly 2012, Komlosy 2018). Traditional Confucian thought, for instance, embraces hard work, perseverance, the maintenance of professional relations, and identification with organizational values. The ancient Mediterranean tradition, exemplified by Plato and Aristotle, admired craft and knowledge-driven productive activity while also espousing the necessity of leisure and freedom for a virtuous life. The Christian tradition contains several different views of work, including that work is toil for human sin, that work should be a calling or vocation by which one glorifies God or carries out God’s will, and that work is an arena in which to manifest one’s status as elect in the eyes of God (the ‘Protestant work ethic’). The onset of the Industrial Revolution and the adverse working conditions of industrial labor sparked renewed philosophical interest in work, most prominently in Marxist critiques of work and labor that predict the alienation of workers under modern capitalism and the emergence of a classless society in which work is minimized or equitably distributed.

Philosophical attention to work and labor seems to increase when work arrangements or values appear to be in flux. For example, recent years have witnessed an increase in philosophical research on work, driven at least in part by the perception that is in ‘crisis’: Economic inequality in employment-centred societies continues to rise, technological automation seems poised to eliminate jobs and to augur an era of persistent high unemployment, and dissatisfaction about the quality or meaningfulness of work in present day jobs appears to be increasing (Schwartz 2015, Livingston 2016, Graeber 2018, Danaher 2019). Many scholars now openly question whether work should be treated as a ‘given’ in modern societies (Weeks 2011).

This entry will attempt to bring systematicity to the extant philosophical literature on work by examining the central conceptual, ethical, and political questions in the philosophy of work and labor (Appiah 2021).

1. Conceptual Distinctions: Work, Labor, Employment, Leisure

2.1 the goods of work, 2.2 opposition to work and work-centred culture, 3.1 distributive justice, 3.2 contributive and productive justice, 3.3 equality and workplace governance, 3.4 gender, care, and emotional labor, 4. work and its future, 5. conclusion, other internet resources, related entries.

It is not difficult to enumerate examples of work. Hence, Samuel Clark:

by work I mean the familiar things we do in fields, factories, offices, schools, shops, building sites, call centres, homes, and so on, to make a life and a living. Examples of work in our commercial society include driving a taxi, selling washing machines, managing a group of software developers, running a till in a supermarket, attaching screens to smartphones on an assembly line, fielding customer complaints in a call centre, and teaching in a school (Clark 2017: 62).

Some contemporary commentators have observed that human life is increasingly understood in work-like terms: parenthood is often described as a job, those with romantic difficulties are invited to ‘work on’ their relationships, those suffering from the deaths of others are advised to undertake ‘grief work,’ and what was once exercise is now ‘working out’ (Malesic 2017). The diversity of undertakings we designate as ‘work’, and the apparent dissimilarities among them, have led some philosophers to conclude that work resists any definition (Muirhead 2007: 4, Svendsen 2015) or is at best a loose concept in which different instances of work share a ‘family resemblance’ (Pence 2001: 96–97).

The porousness of the notion of work notwithstanding, some progress in defining work seems possible by first considering the variety of ways in which work is organized. For one, although many contemporary discussions of work focus primarily on employment , not all work takes the form of employment. It is therefore important not to assimilate work to employment, because not every philosophically interesting claim that is true of employment is true of work as such, and vice versa. In an employment relationship, an individual worker sells their labor to another in exchange for compensation (usually money), with the purchaser of their labor serving as a kind of intermediary between the worker and those who ultimately enjoy the goods that the worker helps to produce (consumers). The intermediary, the employer , typically serves to manage (or appoints those who manage) the hired workers — the employees—, setting most of the terms of what goods are thereby to be produced, how the process of production will be organized, etc. Such an arrangement is what we typically understand as having a job .

But a worker can produce goods without their production being mediated in this way. In some cases, a worker is a proprietor , someone who owns the enterprise as well as participating in the production of the goods produced by that enterprise (for example, a restaurant owner who is also its head chef). This arrangement may also be termed self-employment , and differs from arrangements in which proprietors are not workers in the enterprise but merely capitalize it or invest in it. And some proprietors are also employers, that is, they hire other workers to contribute their labor to the process of production. Arguably, entrepreneurship or self-employment, rather than having a job, has been the predominant form of work throughout human history, and it continues to be prevalent. Over half of all workers are self-employed in parts of the world such as Africa and South Asia, and the number of self-employed individuals has been rising in many regions of the globe (International Labor Organization 2019). In contrast, jobs — more or less permanent employment relationships — are more a byproduct of industrial modernity than we realise (Suzman 2021).

Employees and proprietors are most often in a transactional relationship with consumers; they produce goods that consumers buy using their income. But this need not be the case. Physicians at a ‘free clinic’ are not paid by their patients but by a government agency, charity, etc. Nevertheless, such employees expect to earn income from their work from some source. But some instances of work go unpaid or uncompensated altogether. Slaves work, as do prisoners in some cases, but their work is often not compensated. So too for those who volunteer for charities or who provide unpaid care work , attending to the needs of children, the aged, or the ill.

Thus, work need not involve working for others, nor need it be materially compensated. These observations are useful inasmuch as they indicate that certain conditions we might presume to be essential to work (being employed, being monetarily compensated) are not in fact essential to it. Still, these observations only inform as to what work is not. Can we say more exactly what work is ?

Part of the difficulty in defining work is that whether a person’s actions constitute work seems to depend both on how her actions shape the world as well on the person’s attitudes concerning those actions. On the one hand, the activity of work is causal in that it modifies the world in some non-accidental way. As Bertrand Russell (1932) remarked, “work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so.” But work involves altering the world in presumptively worthwhile ways. In this respect, work is closely tied to the production of what Raymond Geuss (2021:5) has called ‘objective’ value, value residing in “external” products that can be “measured and valued independently of anything one might know about the process through which that product came to be or the people who made it.” By working, we generate goods (material objects but also experiences, states of mind, etc.) that others can value and enjoy in their own right. In most cases of work (for example, when employed), a person is compensated not for the performance of labor as such but because their labor contributes to the production of goods that have such ‘objective’ value. Note, however, that although work involves producing what others can enjoy or consume, sometimes the objective value resulting from work is not in fact enjoyed by others or by anyone at all. A self-sufficient farmer works by producing food solely for their own use, in which case the worker (rather than others) ends up consuming the objective value of their work. Likewise, the farmer who works to produce vegetables for market that ultimately go unsold has produced something whose objective value goes unconsumed.

Geuss has suggested a further characteristic of work, that it is “necessary” for individuals and for “societies as a whole” (2021:18). Given current and historical patterns of human life, work has been necessary to meet human needs. However, if some prognostications about automation and artificial intelligence prove true (see section 4 on ‘The Future of Work’), then the scarcity that has defined the human condition up to now may be eliminated, obviating the necessity of work at both the individual and societal level. Moreover, as Geuss observes, some work aims to produce goods that answer to human wants rather than human needs or necessities (that is, to produce luxuries), and some individuals manage to escape the necessity of work thanks to their antecedent wealth.

Still, work appears to have as one of its essential features that it be an activity that increases the objective (or perhaps intersubjective) value in the world. Some human activities are therefore arguably not work because they generate value for the actor instead of for others. For instance, work stands in contrast to leisure . Leisure is not simply idleness or the absence of work, nor is it the absence of activity altogether (Pieper 1952, Walzer 1983: 184–87, Adorno 2001, Haney and Kline 2010). When at leisure, individuals engage in activities that produce goods for their own enjoyment largely indifferent to the objective value that these activities might generate for others. The goods resulting from a person’s leisure are bound up with the fact that she generates them through her activity. We cannot hire others to sunbathe for us or enjoy a musical performance for us because the value of such leisure activities is contingent upon our performing the activities. Leisure thus produces subjective value that we ‘make’ for ourselves, value that (unlike the objective value generated from work) cannot be transferred to or exchanged with others. It might also be possible to create the objective value associated with working despite being at leisure. A professional athlete, for instance, might be motivated to play her sport as a form of leisure but produce (and be monetarily compensated for the production of) objective value for others (spectators who enjoy the sport). Perhaps such examples are instances of work and leisure or working by way of leisure.

Some accounts of work emphasize not the nature of the value work produces but the individual’s attitudes concerning work. For instance, many definitions of work emphasize that work is experienced as exertion or strain (Budd 2011:2, Veltman 2016:24–25, Geuss 2021: 9–13). Work, on this view, is inevitably laborious. No doubt work is often strenuous. But defining work in this way seems to rule out work that is sufficiently pleasurable to the worker as to hardly feel like a burden. An actor may so enjoy performing that it hardly feels like a strain at all. Nevertheless, the performance is work inasmuch as the actor must deliberately orient their activities to realize the objective value the performance may have for others. Her acting will not succeed in producing this objective value unless she is guided by a concern to produce the value by recalling and delivering her lines, etc. In fact, the actor may find performing pleasurable rather than a burden because she takes great satisfaction in producing this objective value for others. Other work involves little exertion of strain because it is nearly entirely passive; those who are paid subjects in medical research are compensated less for their active contribution to the research effort but simply “to endure” the investigative process and submit to the wills of others (Malmqvist 2019). Still, the research subject must also be deliberate in their participation, making sure to abide by protocols that ensure the validity of the research. Examples such as these suggest that a neglected dimension of work is that, in working, we are paradigmatically guided by the wills of others, for we are aiming in our work activities to generate goods that others could enjoy.

2. The Value of Work

The proposed definition of work as the deliberate attempt to produce goods that others can enjoy or consume indicates where work’s value to those besides the worker resides. And the value that work has to others need not be narrowly defined in terms of specific individuals enjoying or consuming the goods we produce. Within some religious traditions, work is way to serve God and or one’s community.

But these considerations do not shed much light on the first-personal value of work: What value does one’s work have to workers? How do we benefit when we produce goods that others could enjoy?

On perhaps the narrowest conception of work’s value, it only has exchange value. On this conception, work’s value is measured purely in terms of the material goods it generates for the worker, either in monetary terms or in terms of work’s products (growing one’s own vegetables, for instance). To view work as having exchange value is to see its value as wholly extrinsic; there is no value to work as such, only value to be gained from what one’s work concretely produces. If work only has exchange value, then work is solely a cost or a burden, never worth doing for its own sake. Echoing the Biblical tale of humanity’s fall, this conception of work’s value casts it as a curse foisted upon us due to human limitations or inadequacies.

But work is often valued for other reasons. One powerful bit of evidence in favour of work’s being valued for reasons unrelated to its exchange value comes from studies of (involuntary) unemployment. Unemployment usually adverse economic effects on workers, inasmuch as it deprives them, at least temporarily, of income. But prolonged unemployment also has measurable negative effects on individuals’ health, both physical and mental (Calvo et al 2015, Margerison-Zilko et al. 2016, Helliwell et al 2017), as well as being among the most stressful of live events. (Holmes and Rahe 1967). That being deprived of work is evidently so detrimental to individual well-being indicates that work matters for many beyond a paycheck.

Many of the goods of work are linked to the fact that work is nearly always a social endeavour. As Cynthia Estlund (2003:7) observes, “the workplace is the single most important site of cooperative interaction and sociability among adult citizens outside the family.” Individuals thus seek out many social goods through work. Gheaus and Herzog (2016) propose that in addition to providing us wages, work fulfills various social roles. For example, work is a primary means by which individuals can achieve a sense of community. In working with others, we can establish bonds that contribute to our sense of belonging and that enable us to contribute to a distinctive workplace culture. In a similar vein, communitarian theorists often argue that work, by embedding us in shared practices or traditions, is essential to social life (Walzer 1983, Breen 2007). MacIntyre (1984:187) defines a practice as a “any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realised in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity.” Those working together in (say) a bakery are cooperating to produce the goods internal to that activity (bread), with the result that they extend their capacities and enrich their appreciation of the goods they cooperatively produce.

Many philosophers have closely linked work’s value to different aspects of human rationality. For instance, philosophers inspired by thinkers such as Aristotle have underscored work’s ability to allow us to perfect ourselves by developing and exercising our rational potential in worthwhile ways. On this picture, work is a central arena for the realization of our natures across our lifetimes (Clark 2017). Marxists typically agree that work allows us to develop and exercise our rational powers, but add that work’s value also resides in how it enables us to make those powers visible by imparting human form to a natural world that would otherwise remain alien to us. Hence, for Marxists, work is an expression of our active nature, a pathway to self-realization inasmuch as work creates products that “objectify” the human will. Work thus represents a counterweight to the passive consumption characteristic of modern societies (Elster 1989, Sayers 2005).

Another value associated with work is meaningfulness . Philosophical inquiry into meaningful work often parallels philosophical inquiry into the meaning of life . One central dispute about meaningful work is whether it is fundamentally subjective (a matter of how a worker feels about her work), fundamentally objective (a matter of the qualities of one’s work or of the products one makes), or both (Yeoman 2014, Michaelson 2021). Some accounts of meaningful work are broadly Kantian, seeing meaningful work as grounded in the value of autonomy (Schwartz 1982, Bowie 1998, Roessler 2012). Such accounts judge work as meaningful to the extent that it is freely entered into, affords workers opportunities to exercise their own independent judgment, and allows them to pursue ends of their own that are to some extent distinct from the ends mandated by their employers. Other accounts locate the meaningfulness of work in its potential to enhance our capabilities, to manifest virtues such as pride or self-discipline, or to emotionally engage our sense of purpose (Beadle and Knight 2012, Svendsen 2015, Yeoman 2014, Veltman 2016).

At the same time, some argue that meaningful work is in turn a precondition of other important goods. John Rawls, for example, proposed that a lack of opportunity for meaningful work undermines self-respect, where self-respect is the belief that our plan for our lives is both worth pursuing and attainable through our intentional efforts. Meaningful work, as Rawls understood it, involves enjoying the exercise of our capacities, particularly our more complex capacities. Given that meaningful work is a “social basis” for self-respect, a just and stable society may have to offer meaningful work by serving as an “employer of last resort” if such work is otherwise unavailable (Rawls 1996, Moriarty 2009).

Recent years have witnessed a resurgence of interest in the dignity of work. Christian thought, and Catholicism in particular (John Paul II 1981), has long advocated that work manifests the dignity inherent in human beings. The claim that “all work has dignity,” regardless of its nature or of how much social esteem it enjoys, rests on egalitarian ideals about labor, ideals articulated by Black American thinkers such as Booker T. Washington and Martin Luther King, Jr. As Washington expressed it, “there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem” (Washington 1901:220). At the same time however, this tradition has also deployed the notion of dignity as a critical concept, to highlight labor injustice and to decry exploitative forms of work (including slavery) that fail to serve or uplift humanity (Washington 1901: 148, King 2011: 171–72, Veltman 2016: 29–31). This position thus seems to assert that work as such has dignity but that work can also vary in its dignity depending on workers’ economic conditions or social status. More recent philosophical scholarship on the dignity of work has investigated its relationship to human rights. For instance, Paolo Gilabert (2018) distinguishes between dignity as a status and dignity as a condition. Status dignity is grounded in certain valuable capacities that individuals have, capacities that in turn that require workers be treated with respect and concern. Condition dignity is achieved when individuals are treated in accordance with the ‘dignitarian’ norms mandated by such respect or concern. Gilabert’s distinction may allow the affirmation both of the inherent dignity of work, inasmuch as work gives evidence of human capacities worthy of respect, and of the claim that failing to provide decent working conditions is at odds with (but does not undermine) dignity.

That work is a potential source of income, social and personal goods, meaning, or dignity, does not entail that work in fact provides these goods or that work is good for us on balance . Since the Industrial Revolution in particular, many philosophers and social theorists have been sceptical about the value of work and of the work-centred cultures typical of contemporary affluent societies (Deranty 2015).

Crucially, much of the scepticism surrounding the value of work is not scepticism about the value of work per se but scepticism about the value of work in present day social conditions or scepticism about the veneration of work found in the “Protestant work ethic” (Weber 1904–05) or in work-centred societies. Sceptics about work-centred culture question whether popular enthusiasm for work is rational or well-informed or whether it gives adequate credence to alternatives to work-centred culture (Cholbi 2018b, Sage 2019). Indeed, many critics of contemporary work arrangements essentially argue that good or desirable work is possible but rarer than we suppose. In “Useful Work versus Useful Toil,” (1884), for example, the socialist activist William Morris rejects “the creed of modern morality that all labor is good in itself” and argues for a distinction between work that is “a blessing, a lightening of life” and work that is “a mere curse, a burden to life,” offering us no hope of rest, no hope of producing anything genuinely useful, and no hope of pleasure in its performance. Similarly, the anarchist Bob Black opens his essay “The Abolition of Work” (1985) as follows:

No one should ever work. Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world. Almost any evil you’d care to name comes from working or from living in a world designed for work. In order to stop suffering, we have to stop working.

But Black proceeds to define work as “forced labor, that is, compulsory production.” His ‘abolition’ of work is thus compatible with individuals voluntarily engaging in economically productive activities, which (as we have seen) can resemble work in its essentials.

Danaher (2019:54) allows that work can contribute to human well-being, but as presently organized, the world of work is “structurally bad” and unlikely to change in these respects:

The labor market in most developed countries has settled into an equilibrium pattern that makes work very bad for many people, that is getting worse as a result of technical and institutional changes, and that is very difficult to reform or improve in such a way as to remove its bad-making properties.

Thus, even those espousing stridently ‘anti-work’ positions usually target not work as such, but work as it has been organized or understood in the contemporary world. Indeed, much of their ire is directed at current conditions of employment, which (as noted earlier) is only one prominent species work can take.

The sceptical case against work or work culture has many dimensions, but can be fruitfully analysed as having four strands:

Goods not realized: While work can be a source of various goods, many people’s working lives fail to provide them these goods. Popular enthusiasm for work thus seems misplaced, according to work sceptics, for “the moral sanctity of work is painfully out of step with the way that a vast proportion of people actually experience their jobs” (Frayne 2015: 62–63).

With respect to the exchange value of work, work is often poorly compensated or insecure. Contemporary economies are increasingly characterized by a ‘hollowing out’ of middle class labor, wherein wages continue to increase for those at the upper end of the wage scale, wages stagnate at the bottom end of the scale, and the number of workers in the middle strata shrinks. This has resulted in the emergence of a class of ‘working poor,’ individuals who lack sufficient income to pay for basic needs such as housing or food despite being employed.

Many of the other potential goods of work are enjoyed by some workers, but many receive little social recognition or do not achieve a greater sense of community through their work. A good deal of socially valuable or ‘essential’ work is largely invisible to its beneficiaries. Many jobs are dull or unchallenging, contributing little to the development or exercise of our more sophisticated human capacities. It is difficult to envision, for instance, that toll booth workers find their jobs or stimulating or challenging (aside from testing their ability to withstand repetition or boredom).

Modern work has been oriented around the division of labor , i.e., the increasing separation of productive processes into ever smaller tasks. (The factory assembly line provides the model here.) The division of labor results in workers becoming hyper-specialists, who repetitively perform narrow or simple tasks. Although the division of labor increases overall economic productivity, critics such as the classical economist Adam Smith worried that it eventually makes workers “as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become.” (Smith 1776 [1976]: V.1.178) As to meaning or dignity, a wide swath of human work neither engages workers nor allows them to exercise their autonomous judgment, and many work in oppressive or exploitative conditions seemingly at odds with the dignity of the work they perform.

Internal tensions among work goods: A characteristic of work-centred societies is that their members look to work to provide them with many different goods. But work (and employment in particular) may be ill-suited to provide this package of goods, i.e., work may be capable of providing some of these goods but only at the expense of others. For instance, many of the professions that individuals view as offering the greatest opportunities for meaningful work (such as education, counseling, or care for the sick, young, or disabled) are among the poorest paid professions. Contemporary labor markets thus seem to offer a workers the opportunity for an inadequate income or meaningful work, but rarely both. The psychologist Barry Schwartz argues (2015) that our non-material motivations for work, such as seeking meaningfulness, social engagement, and opportunities for autonomy, are in motivational competition with the monetary incentives associated with work. The monetary incentives distort workplace attitudes and behaviours so that the non-material goods we seek in work are crowded out by a focus on productivity and the economic goods work makes available. That labor markets are competitive may also undermine the social benefits of work, for even those who succeed in the labor market do so by being ‘pitted against’ other workers in ways that reduce solidarity among them, turning fellow citizens into rivals who are indifferent (or even hostile to) each other’s interests (Hussain 2020).

Unrecognized bads or costs: Sceptics also point to ‘bads’ or costs associated with work that tend to go unrecognized. The most obvious of these is the opportunity costs resulting from the amount of time spent working. Typically, full-time workers spend 1,500–2,500 hours per year on the job, equivalent to around nine to fifteen weeks annually. These are hours that, were they not allocated to working, could be devoted to leisure, sleep, exercise, family life, civic and community engagement, and so on (Rose 2016). These hours do not include the considerable amount of time that workers expend on training or educating themselves for work or on commuting to and from workplaces. Nor does it include the hours that many salaried workers are expected to be ‘connected’ or ‘on call’ by their employers. Formal employment also tends to preclude workers from work other than that performed for their employers, with the result that workers often end up paying other workers for that labor. Such costs include the hiring of housekeepers, child care providers, maintenance experts and landscapers, etc. And while unemployment seems to have adverse effects on our physical and mental well-being, working is not free of adverse health effects either, including stress, emotional frustration, and physical ailments from repetitive work tasks or ergonomic deficiencies in workplace design.

Sceptics also argue that when work fails to deliver certain kinds of goods, workers suffer certain psychological bads. Three such classes of bads merit particular attention:

• Marx’s critique of work under capitalism rests on the notion that work often lacks goods whose absence gives rise to the further bad of alienation . Marx (1844) proposed that work under capitalism alienates workers from what they produce, inasmuch as workers have little if any say over what is produced and how; from the act of work itself, inasmuch as workers are compelled by economic necessity to work and so do not take intrinsic satisfaction in working; from their own human nature or “species-essence,” inasmuch as workers do not witness their own agency or intentions “objectified” in the products of their work; and from other workers, inasmuch as capitalism treats workers as interchangeable inputs of production and pits worker against worker. In terms of our earlier enumeration of the goods of work, Marx’s appeal to alienation suggests that the absence of these goods is not merely a lack or a deprivation but is a positive bad of work in its own right (Elster 1989, Brudney 1998, Kandiyali 2020).
• Many work sceptics emphasize how work may distort our priorities or values. The value of work, in their eyes, has come to be an unquestioned ethical dogma. “The economists and the moralists have cast a sacred halo over work,” according to Paul LaFargue (1883), instilling us in the “delusion” of the “love of work.” (See also Frayne 2015.) Bertrand Russell (1932) argued that the veneration of work has eroded our appreciation of the value of leisure and idleness. (See also O’Connor 2018.) Economists such as Keynes (1930) observed that the dramatic increases in economic productivity have often not led to reductions in work time, a development he attributes to a work ethic that stymies our capacity to enjoy leisure and abundance.
• The social cachet of work may end up warping our moral relationship to ourselves, treating ourselves not as intrinsically valuable but as mere instruments of production. Hannah Arendt (1958) argued that conceiving of ourselves primarily as workers leads to a sort of instrumental stance on ourselves and other human agents, in which we come to view ourselves purely as resources for production or sites of consumption. More recent critics have proposed that work-centred cultures encourage us to view the self as a commodity to be ‘branded’ or marketed to prospective employers (Davis 2003).

Lastly, work can have costs to others besides workers themselves. The aforementioned opportunity costs deriving from time devoted to work may worsen workers’ relationships with others or bar their communities from making use of those workers’ skills for socially worthwhile purposes. Some work arguably makes workers complicit in harmful or unjust practices, such as the sale of tobacco or unhealthy foods. Workers may also impose negative externalities through their work. For example, working outside the home typically results in a greater environmental impact, including contributions to the carbon outputs responsible for global climate change (James 2018).

Alternatives sources of work-related goods: A last thread in ‘anti-work’ thinking is that, even to the degree that work is good, it is not obviously uniquely situated to provide the goods it provides. A sense of social recognition or identity can be rooted in domains of human life besides employment, such as volunteer work, family life, religion, or friendship. “Ludic” activities, i.e., play, can offer opportunities to exercise and hone our rational capacities (Black 1985, Nguyen 2019). Some have proposed that virtual reality will provide us simulacra of work-like activities that could thereby substitute for work itself. Contrary to Gheaus and Herzog (2016) then, work may not be a “a privileged context” for realizing the goods we associate with work.

Anti-work theorists typically call for work to be re-valued such that individuals will ‘work to live, not live to work,’ as well as policies (such as reductions in the mandated weekly working time) to minimize the influence of work on our quality of life. That work is both unavoidable and seemingly necessary but frustrating might suggest the wisdom of an ironic stance toward work (de Botton 2010).

3. Justice and the Politics of Work

Human societies can be seen as cooperative endeavours aimed at securing their members’ interests. If so, then social justice will be centrally concerned with those practices within societies by which individuals cooperate to produce goods for one another’s use. Work is therefore a central concern of social justice. Questions of work and justice arise both with respect to the design of institutions and the choices of individuals.

Most accounts of justice assume that a large number of individuals within a given society will engage in paid work. A crucial moral question, then, is what individuals are entitled to with respect to both the benefits and the harms of work. How, in other words, are the goods and bads of work justly distributed?

One possible answer to this question is that each worker is entitled to whatever benefits their talents and abilities enable them to secure in a labor market governed purely by supply and demand. This answer entails that those whose talents or abilities are in high demand and/or short supply will command greater benefits from prospective employers than those whose talents or abilities are in low demand and/or generously supplied (Boatright 2010). (This same logic would apply to those who use their labor to produce goods for sale rather than those in employment arrangements.)

After the early decades of the twentieth century, many nations implemented policies at odds with this ‘pure market’ vision of work and labor. Most have wage regulations, for example, mandating a minimum level of pay. But the justice of minimum levels of pay is disputed, with some theorists arguing that disallowing a person to sell her labor at a price she judges adequate infringes on her personal liberty. According to many libertarian thinkers, our labor is an exercise of our bodies or our talents, each of which we own in a way akin to our ownership of private property. To disallow someone the right to sell their labor even at a very low cost thus infringes on their rights of self-ownership. (Mack 2002) The fairness of wage differentials is also disputed. Should wages track the economic value of a worker’s contributions or their effort, or are wages primarily an incentive to encourage worker commitment and motivation? (Heath 2018, Moriarty 2020) Some theorists have proposed that inequalities in pay ought to be eliminated altogether (Örtenblad 2021), while some supporters of an unconditional basic income, in which individuals receive regular payments regardless of their working status, see it an alternative way to ensure a sufficient minimum income, one immune to workers becoming unemployed (van Parijs and Vanderbroght 2017).

Distributive justice also pertains to various protections against harms or wrongs associated with work. Again, most societies place legal limitations on various conditions of work. These include protections against overwork via limitations on the length of the workday or workweek; bans on discrimination in hiring or promotion based on race, gender, religion, or other social categories; assurances that workplace risks and dangers are mitigated; and, at a wider societal level, prohibitions aimed at ensuring that individuals lives are not dominated by work at particular life stages (bans on child labor and provisions to make retirement possible). One important moral question about these protections is whether workers should have the right to bargain away some of these protections either for increased pay (as when employees negotiate higher wages in exchange for performing more dangerous jobs) or for enhancements in other protections.

The questions of distributive justice addressed in the previous section concern what goods workers receive from work if they work at all. But critical questions about justice also pertain to whether workers are entitled to work and whether they are obligated to do so. Work thus raises questions of contributive and productive justice respectively.

For one, do workers have a right to work in the first place? The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states as much, assuring each individual “the right to work, to free employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.” (United Nations 1948, Article 23) A right to work would presumably be more than a negative liberty, i.e., not simply a right that others not interfere with one’s attempts to work, secure employment, etc., but a claim to be provided work if one wishes (Schaff 2017). The right to work has been defended both for specific populations (such as the disabled; see Kavka 1992) or for the populace writ large (Tcherneva 2020). If there is such a right, it will presumably be because work is an essential (or at least the prevailing) means for the acquisition of vital goods. Elster (1988) proposes a job guarantee on the grounds that work is essential to self-realization. Gomberg (2007) argues that work is a key social good because it is the primary path by which to make a socially validated contribution to one’s wider community, a contribution that can provide us recognition and a sense of meaning. Two crucial questions that arise in connection with the putative right to work are (a) against whom is this right held, i.e., who must provide work if workers have a right to it, or (b) whether work provided so as to honour this right will in fact provide the goods on which the right to work is based (e.g., the work provided under a government-provided job guarantee could prove unfulfilling).

A right to work would mean that any person (or at least any adult) who wished to work would be able to do so. But do individuals have a right not to work, or is work in any sense morally obligatory? The most obvious basis for such an obligation appeals to notions of fair play or reciprocity : Individuals act wrongly when they fail to contribute to social enterprises from which they benefit, and since the productive economy benefits most everyone in a society, individuals have an obligation to contribute to the productive economy by working. (Becker 1980, White 2003) Opponents of this fair play rationale argue that the conditions for just reciprocal relations between societies and particular groups (e.g., the ghetto poor; see Shelby 2012) do not obtain, thereby exempting members of such groups from the obligation to work, or that contemporary economic developments fail to provide the background conditions for the obligation to apply (Cholbi 2018a). Other opponents of an obligation to work argue that it represents a violation of the state’s duty to treat citizens equally; citizens who are compelled to work are made to pursue a conception of the good life with which they may not agree, and a just state should treat citizens as equals by remaining neutral among rival conceptions of the good life (van Parijs 1991, Levine 1995). An obligation to work would in effect amount to the state’s endorsement of the ‘work ethic’ and the rejection of ways of life (e.g., being a beachcomber) that themselves oppose the work ethic. Other opponents of a duty to work argue that requiring individuals to work is likely to stand in the way of self-realization for particular people (Maskivker 2012).

Another possibility is that even if there is not a general obligation to work, we might be subject to limitations on our work-related liberties in order to satisfy demands of distributive justice. Many of the goods provided by a just society, including education and health care, are labor-intensive. But societies often face shortfalls of workers in the very occupations that provide these goods. Some philosophers have argued that the demands of distributive justice may permissibly constrain our work choices, and in fact, may license governments conscripting labor in order to secure workers to provide these goods, on the model of the military draft during wartime. (Fabré 2008, Stanczyk 2012). Similar concerns arise concerning socially necessary but undesirable ‘dirty’ work.(Walzer 1983, Schmode 2019). Conversely, if justice can require individuals to perform certain kinds of work, this might speak against a right to strike (Borman, 2017, Gourevitch 2018), particularly on the part of essential workers (Munoz 2014).

How one’s choice of work contributes to justice and the overall good is a moral question that individuals face as well. Some jobs (hired assassin, for example) seem immoral as such. But to what extent, if any, are we obligated to choose careers or jobs that promote justice or the welfare of others? On the one hand, choice of jobs and careers does not appear exempt from moral considerations, inasmuch as the work one performs affects others and society at large, and given the often dismal state of the world, perhaps we are obligated to choose jobs and careers for moral reasons rather than solely on the basis of self-interest. Norman Care (1984:285) proposes “that in today’s world morality requires that service to others be put before self-realization in the matter of career choice.” In contrast, some philosophers who believe that individuals (and not merely institutions) within a society are subject to demands of justice nevertheless accord individuals discretion in their choices of occupation. G.A. Cohen, for instance, asserts that we should each enjoy a “personal prerogative” that allows us to be something more than an “engine for the welfare of other people” or “slaves to social justice.” (2008:10) We might likewise worry that requiring that our job or career choices be optimal from the standpoint of justice or social welfare is excessively demanding in light of how such choices both reflect and shape our identities (Cholbi 2020).

In recent years, egalitarian philosophers have begun to critique typical workplace arrangements as antagonistic to requirements of equal relations among individuals in society. Particularly influential here is Anderson’s suggestion that many workplaces amount to a form of “private government,” at least as authoritarian as many forms of state government.

Imagine a government that assigns almost everyone a superior whom they must obey. Although superiors give most inferiors a routine to follow, there is no rule of law. Orders may be arbitrary and can change at any time, without prior notice or opportunity to appeal. Superiors are unaccountable to those they order around. They are neither elected nor removable by their inferiors. …The government does not recognize a personal or private sphere or autonomy free from sanction. It may prescribe a dress code and forbid certain hairstyles. Everyone lives under surveillance, to ensure that they are complying with orders. …The economic system of the society run by this government is communist. The government owns all the nonlabor means of production in the society it governs. It organizes production by means of central planning. The form of the government is a dictatorship (Anderson 2017: 37–38).

The ‘society’ Anderson invites us to imagine is of course the contemporary workplace, at least as it stands in the United States and many other nations. Anderson and other relational egalitarians view the relationships defined by the powers that employers usually have over their employees as oppressive and unjust. Workers are subject to employers’ ‘governance,’ but this governance consists in employees being arbitrarily and unaccountably subject to the wills of employers. The relational egalitarian thus concludes that workplaces, as presently constituted, do not involve employees and employers relating as genuine equals. And while employees will generally have the right to exit employment relationships, this may be little protection against oppression if most workplaces are organized in the way Anderson illustrates.

To some degree, the inequalities to which Anderson points are products of labor law and policies specific to different nations. There are, however, ways of altering the relationships between employers and workers so as to potentially prevent or address these (and other) inequalities.

Perhaps the most familiar such method is unionization or collective bargaining. Worker unions amplify the power of individual workers in relation to their employers by compelling employers to negotiate contracts with workers as a body. Unions may organize workers within a particular profession, within many professions, or within a single workplace or firm. Societies vary considerably in the degrees to which their workers are unionized and their labor laws friendly to union formation and power. Unions are presumptively justified on the grounds that workers who consensually form or join unions are exercising their right to freely associate with others with whom they share interests in order to promote those interests (Lindblom 2019), though if union membership is required in order to be employed in a particular workplace or industry, unionization may violate individuals right not to associate with others or to associate with (in this instance, to enter into an employment relationship) any party of their choosing (White 1998).Appealing to “republican liberty,” Mark Reiff (2020) has argued that unions should be viewed as a basic institution of society that protects workers’ liberty from exploitation by employers. On Reiff’s view, unionization should therefore be universal and compulsory .

Other methods for redressing the seemingly unequal and oppressive relations between employers and employees involve breaking the monopoly on decision making that management typically has within a given firm or employment arrangement. Typical workplaces are hierarchical rather than democratic. Many egalitarian critics of work call for the workplace to be more democratized, with workers having a greater say not only concerning their own working conditions but also concerning decisions usually reserved for management. Advocates for workplace democracy often argue that it is likely to be the most effective workplace organization in protecting workers’ interests. (González-Ricoy 2014). Others emphasize that the workplace is a microcosm of larger society and hence serves as a training ground for the development of virtues needed to live in a larger democratic society (Pateman 1970, Estlund 2003). But perhaps the most basic argument for workplace democracy is that firms are analogous to states, and so if the state ought to be governed democratically, so too should firms and other workplaces (Dahl 1986, Mayer 2000, Landemore & Ferreras 2016). Workplace democracy would seem to render the workplace more just inasmuch as it makes workers’ conditions a partial byproduct of their consent and a reflection of their autonomy (Schaff 2012).

Work’s role in justice is further complicated by the fact that work is a highly gendered phenomenon in many societies. For one, women typically perform much of the housekeeping and child care that traditionally have not been recognized with monetary compensation. Within the formal labor market, many societies have a wage gap wherein women are paid less than men for similar work, and there are significant differences in gender representations in different professions (traditionally, women highly represented in fields such as primary school teaching, nursing, and social work, men highly represented in fields such as engineering and finance). Feminist philosophers have detected in these differentials an undervaluation of the kinds of work, particularly care work, that women have often performed (Gurtler and Smith 2005) as well as a blind spot in philosophical theorizing about justice wherein ‘relational’ goods that matter to our life prospects but are usually not provided via market exchange are ignored (Gheaus 2009). One intricate set of issues here is understanding the underlying relations of cause and effect: Are women in societies with sexist norms pushed toward low pay or low prestige jobs because they are women, or are these low pay or low prestige jobs because women tend to perform them (or both)? In a similar vein, we may wonder how norms of gender intersect with the gendered division of labor (whether, for example, the stereotype that women are more eager to care for children feeds the gendered division of labor or whether the gendered division of labor reinforces that stereotype, or both).

The gendered division of labor is open to objections of different kinds: On the one hand, it appears to result in distributions of work-related goods (such as income, free time, etc.) in which women are systematically shortchanged. In addition, the gendered division of labor may be unjust because it contributes to hierarchies between the genders that render them unequal. (Hartley and Watson 2018) Schouten (2019) argues that, although many individuals embrace traditional gender norms and the gendered division of labor these entail, those who instead favour gender-egalitarian ways of life have a reasonable ground to complain when societies create institutions and policies that support expectations — the gendered division of labor chief among these — that serve as impediments to such ways of life. According to Schouten then, a just society will regulate work time, family leave, and dependent care so as to foster gender-egalitarian ways of life and a non-gendered division of labor. (See also Wright and Brighouse 2008, Gheaus 2012.)

A further strand in feminist thought about work arises from Hochschild’s scholarship (2012) on emotional labor . Some work involves intensive monitoring or management of one’s own emotions in order to engage or manipulate the emotions of others. Although Hochschild offers examples of such emotional labor undertaken both by women and men, some professions in which women predominate are saturated with emotional labor. Hochschild notes that female flight attendants, for instance, are subject to a wide array of emotional expectations vis-à-vis air travellers (smiling, friendly banter, interest in travellers’ destinations or professions, etc.). Scholars have highlighted a number of ethically salient features of emotional labor (see Barry, Olekalns, and Rees 2019 for a useful overview), but the phenomenon has been subject to little systematic philosophical analysis. Hochschild primarily emphasizes the detrimental effects of emotional labor on workers themselves, arguing that it can estrange workers from their own emotions and lead to struggles to identify or express authentic emotion both within and outside the workplace. Furthermore, when emotional labor results in employees’ “surface acting,” that is, displaying emotions at odds with their own internal feelings, employees’ health suffers. Other ethical concerns are more interpersonal — for example, that emotional labor is deceptive or lacks integrity. Barry, Olekalns, and Rees (2019) offer a useful starting point by noting that emotional labor raises the prospect of conflicts between workers’ rights and the rights of their employers, between workers’ rights and workers’ duties, and between employer rights and employer duties.

A number of social commentators have predicted that economic and technological trends will soon culminate in societies become increasingly ‘post-work,’ that is, far fewer individuals will engage in paid work, work hours will dramatically decrease, and work will have a far smaller role among individuals’ values or concerns.(Frey and Osborne 2013, Thompson 2015, Brynjolofsson and McAfee 2014). Whether this prospect should be welcomed or avoided depends to a large extent on issues addressed earlier in this article: how good work in fact is, whether there are other avenues for attaining the goods associated with work, etc.

Some welcome a post-work future as liberating (Livingston 2016, Chamberlain 2018, James 2018, Danaher 2019), arguing that diminutions in the centrality of work will afford us greater leisure, freedom, or community, especially if activities such as play or the appreciation of the natural worlds supplant work. Others worry that the decline of work will deprive us of a central arena in which to realize goods central to our natures (Deranty 2015) or will instigate high levels of inequality or economic distress (Frase 2016). Others express concern about individuals’ ability to psychologically transition from a work-centred to a work-optional society (Cholbi 2018b).

Work and labor bear intrinsic philosophical interest. But their centrality to the human condition also entail that work and labor intersect with still broader philosophical questions about the human good and the just organization of human societies. Ongoing and anticipated changes to the world of work should provide rich fodder for philosophical inquiry in coming decades. Philosophy is likely to have a special role to play in addressing what Appiah (2021:7) has called the “hard problem,” to determine “how to produce the goods and services we need, while providing people with income, sociability, and significance.”

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economics [normative] and economic justice | ethics: business | exploitation | feminist philosophy, topics: perspectives on class and work | justice: distributive | life: meaning of | markets | Marx, Karl | Smith, Adam: moral and political philosophy | value: intrinsic vs. extrinsic | well-being

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Sergio Caredda

Insights on Work, Organisation Design, Experience, Leadership and Change.

• The Ultimate Quest for the Meaning of Work. Introduction

A Journey into Work through History, the Evolution of its Meaning, and how it will affect the Society of the Future.

• Part 1: A Brief History of Work
• Part 2: The Discourses of Work through History
• Part 3: When Work Became a Job.
• Part 4: The New Discourse of Work: Personal Realisation
• Part 5: Work Design
• Reinventing Work

What is the Meaning of Work ? I guess many of us have been raising this question over time. I have just recently celebrated my 20th anniversary of working , yet the true meaning of work can be sometimes difficult to grasp. For sure, Work is a foundational element in the lives of every individual. For many, it is the defining element of one’s life. In Work, we see the connector between individual passions and ambitions, personal realisation, economic prosperity and sometimes higher aspirations. Yet we also connect the concept of Work to exploitation, fatigue, demotivation, poverty and fight for survival. The search for better working conditions is probably the single most crucial push for Human Migrations in the last century.

What is Work?

Work is also the main  connecting point between Individuals and Organisations , which is why the concept of Work itself is attracting my interest in recent time. I have already written a few months ago a long article about the necessity to  Reinvent Work  as a concept, and I have concentrated there on a few facts that today, affect the perception of Work and its Value.

Flows of Meaning in the Intentional Organisation

Since that post, however, I have continued my investigation around the concept of  the Intentional Organisation . I am more and more convinced that real advancement in organisation design and performance can only come from the realisation of the Flows of  Meaning of Work  and  Meaning of Value  that each organisation triggers, in most cases unconsciously. 

With this research effort, I will concentrate on the right side of the scheme in figure one, trying to explore the exchange of  Worth  and  Significance  that the  Meaning of Work  carries. We will also learn that it is not possible to identify one “best” meaning of Work, as this relates to the  specific relationship between organisations and workers . An element that is immediately visible when we think at the ties that non-profit organisations can establish with volunteers: the meaning of Work there is different than the that of a traditional employment setting. I plan to do a similar investigation in the future on the sense of Value.

Why Investigating the Meaning of Work?

Merely accepting the  General Accepted Meaning of Work  is misleading, especially because, as we will see, we are at a cleavage point between two particular  Discourses of Work . Investigating Work is, however, a daunting task. A lot of what has been written on the topic over the last century belongs to a specific discourse. Work is often seen as the currency of social class warfare. Trying to evade from that perspective is not easy, and although a lot has been researched on the topic, still there is not a holistic view of the concept of Work that would satisfy me. 

• Why do women and men work?
• What is the Value of Work?
• What are the choices that individuals have around work?
• What is the relationship between the worker and the organisations that “give work”?
• How will Work evolve in the future?

I guess many of you would share some of these questions. I will try to answer at least some of these if you have the patience to read the results of this research.

Definitions of Work

Work can be defined in multiple ways, and browsing through any dictionary will find different angles on the same  topic , together with its nearest synonym:  Labour . Let’s see a couple of them.

First of all,  Work  can be seen as an  intentional activity people perform to  support  themselves, others, or the needs and wants of a wider community . This definition is useful, as it looks at the intentionality of this activity, as well as the objective of  supporting  ones’ lifestyle. Another view comes from the field of classic economics, whereby Labour is seen as the  human activity that contributes (along with other  factors of production ) towards the goods and services within an economy .

Both definitions are, however, restrictive. The word  Work , and similar words in all other languages ( lavoro  in Italian,  travail  in French,  Arbeit  in German,  trabajo  in Spanish and so on), often refer to many different meanings (I am excluding the concept of Work in physics):

• A sustained physical or mental effort to achieve something  (it took her a lot of Work to complete the puzzle )
• The place of employment ( I’m going to work today ).
• The results of someone’s effort or exercise of skills ( this book is the Work of a skilled writer).
• Something that results from a particular way of working ( it was a great camera work ).
• Structures resulting from the application of engineering (usually in plural form), or sometimes the process of construction ( mining works ).
• The moving part of a mechanism ( the works of a clock ).
• Performance of moral or religious acts  (salvation by works ).
• The results of an artist’s activity ( The Demoiselles d’Avignon is a work by Picasso )
• The entire collection of publications or production of an artist ( James Joyce’s entire Work ).
• Subjection to a drastic treatment and possible abuse ( gave them the works )
• The set of tools of an artisan ( the plumbers’ work ).

There are probably few words that are so rich of a differentiated set of meanings. Somehow this richness reflects also the different types of Work, and the various individual and social experiences that Work has exerted over history. I will be dedicating a first consistent part of this investigation on the changing meaning of Work across human’s history, as well as at the different  discourses  that Work has been associated with. 

The General Accepted Meaning of Work

I’m here introducing the concept of  Generally Accepted Meaning . The idea is based on the concept of General Accepted Principles, that, for example, is applied for Accounting. These are not scientifically demonstrated principles, or elements that are thoroughly mandated by law, but rather several shared norms that have developed over time through application. Often these standards are enforced in their application by a body like the FASB in the case of accounting principles.

With this expression, I want to underline the fact that rarely this “shared meaning” is challenged. In modern society, for example, we take for granted that Work is, typically, part of a contractual relationship between an employer and an employee. This construct, however, is, historically, pretty recent. 

By merely accepting this construct without interrogating on the nature of Work, means that organisations are often losing the potential to establish priority in defining new chains of Worth and Significance. A part of the so-called  new economy  has tried to challenge some of this structure, for example with the expanding reality of  gig workers . But we often try to understand the unknown, by using dimensions of the past. 

A Quest for the Meaning of Work: Essay’s Structure

The topic of the Meaning of Work is too complex and multifaceted to fit just one article. I have therefore decided to split this essay over several items, that I will (hopefully) publish on a weekly frequency. 

• I will first investigate the History of Work , with a summary of how the concept of Work evolved through the centuries . I will use a mainly western approach to this, as my knowledge of other cultural domains is limited. The idea, however, is to investigate this further, significantly as the world of Work today is profoundly impacted by Asia, for example.
• Then, I will try to summon up the historical context through an analysis of the various Discourses of Work that succeeded around history. Using the concept of discourse, I will try to map out the ways Work has been understood over time . I can already anticipate that a remarkable fact is that all the discourses are still existing in today’s society, noticing how the concept itself is the result of a complex stratification of human aspects.
• I will then try to investigate precisely a critical transition point: When did Work become a Job? One of the most significant limits of today’s General Accepted Meaning of Work is that, in organisational contexts, we tend to equate it to the concept of Job . Work is put in boxes, it becomes fungible, the idea of agency rules the relationship between employer and employees, and tayloristic efficiency is applied to its development. Yet, this model has been in crisis for decades. There isn’t, however, a consolidated alternative, although many contributions are providing the building blocks to a new discourse.
• I will examine the early signs of the creation of a New Discourse of Work being framed today. I will try to “connect the dots” with a lot of elements we have seen in recent months, through the books reviewed and the “rebels” ideas that I have checked and proposed across the current period. With your help, I will try to suggest how this new idea of Work is brewing, and what are the consequences for organisations.
• An article will be dedicated to Work Design , like this, I believe, becomes the next frontier of organisational thinking. I will explain the difference between Job Design and Work Design, and provide a new and different lens to explain the changing relationship between the individual and the organisation in providing Value for the ecosystem.
• Finally, I will review my original article Reinventing Work with the outcomes of this discussion, as I believe some new details will emerge through this research.

As usual, this is very much a work in progress, so I will particularly welcome any idea, suggestion and feedback you might have. Please  use the Comments form here or after each article to provide your inputs, or  get back in touch with me .

Cover Photo by  Antonio Gabola  on  Unsplash

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Great ‘work’ Sergio (pun intended). Work, per se, is irrelevant. What really matters is the purpose behind it!

Thank you! Agree with the purpose piece, as today it’s becoming more and more relevant. But this idea is, apparently, pretty recent.

[…] built as a journalistic investigation. I read the book as part of my current fixation on the Meaning of Work, and have found some exciting elements for that […]

[…] that I collect through my readings across the web. Work as Personal Realisation is one of the main Discourses of Work that I have identified, and we look here at the biggest challenges coming from living in a VUCA […]

[…] of Work as Job, that I collect through my readings across the web. Work as Job is one of the main Discourses of Work that I have identified, and we look here at the result of the Industrial Revolution, its focus on […]

[…] Last week I have been invited to participate in a lesson at the Universität St.Gallen (HSG) by prof. Antoinette Weibel, where I presented, for the first time, a short version of the investigation work done on The Meaning of Work. […]

[…] interrogating us on the meaning of Work and Value is a way to continually redefine humanity, through the links and relationship that make […]

[…] Quote from the source: … […]

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• Published: 01 August 2023

Organizational behaviour

The meaning of work

• Hannah Weisman   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-6874-9339 1  

Nature Reviews Psychology volume  2 ,  page 522 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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• Human behaviour

Close your eyes for a moment and imagine it is 9 a.m. tomorrow. You are opening your laptop to start your workday. Why are you working?

Work holds different meanings for different people. For some people, work is a means to a financial end (a job), an unfortunate necessity of life that provides a paycheck and funds life’s more enjoyable, non-work pursuits. For other people, work is a means of advancement in the world (a career), an opportunity to achieve higher social standing by ascending in an occupational or organizational hierarchy. Finally, for some people, work is a meaningful end in itself (a calling), an intrinsically rewarding endeavour that they see as central to their identity and, often, as making the world a better place.

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Wrzesniewski, A. et al. Jobs, careers, and callings: people’s relations to their work. J. Res. Pers. 31 , 21–33 (1997)

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Weisman, H. The meaning of work. Nat Rev Psychol 2 , 522 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-023-00223-7

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Essay About Work and Its Meaning

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Topic: History , Career , Bible , Public Relations , Thinking , Success , Profession , Life

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Published: 12/09/2019

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The interaction that people have with work has been an intriguing variable of personality since the beginning of time, as there have long been people who appear to be industrious out of sheer nature, while others seem like they would be fine with malingering to the point of starvation. In his establishment of the Jamestown colony, Captain John Smith had to institute a rule that anyone who was unwilling to work would not receive food. Given the extreme difficulty of making a settlement in an inhospitable, inconvenient land, and given that most people setting out to live in a new country would have taken that difficulty into account, it is hard to imagine why anyone would have a hard time getting up out of bed in the morning and heading out to workbuilding new homes, clearing land, tending livestock, or doing whatever else it would take to bring the new colony further away from subsistence and closer to stability.

Personally, I suppose that I view work as a means to an end. I have a lot of goals for myself, but most of them don’t have a lot to do with my profession. I do want to have a family someday, and I want to raise my children in an area where they can go to excellent schools. I also want to run a marathon on each of the seven continents, and I want to live a comfortable lifestyle as far as nice vacations. This means that I’ll have to do very well for myself professionally. However, while working hard is important, I don’t think that work done for its own sake is particularly worthwhile, unless you’re an artist. After all, lawyers, for example, make a ton of money, but how many of them end up changing the world because of the suits they file, or because of the briefs they prepare? The lawyers who have made their way into the history books are few and far between. What about plastic surgeons, or other people who have made their millions in elective fields of medicine? Again, they succeed to do well for themselves, not to make a difference – at least not through their professional work.

Marge Piercy appears to echo this in her poem “To Be of Use.” Rather than value any particular profession, instead she says that she is most inspired by those who “jump into work head first/without dallying in the shadows” (2-3). These people have a work ethic that makes them proactive, seeking out opportunities to excel. She has a similar admiration for those who “harness themselves, an os to a heavy cart,/who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,/who do what has to be done, again and again” (8, 10-11). Also, those who seek individual recognition for their success do not appear to appeal to Piercy; instead, she says that she wants “to be with people who submerge/in the task, who go into the fields to harvest” (12-13). Instead of serving as “parlor generals and field deserters,” (16), they must work as one with their colleagues, working “in a common rhythm/when the food must come in or the fire be put out” (17-18).

One might think that it would be difficult to find the sort of individual prosperity in a profession like the ones that Piercy describes. However, instead of specific vocations, I am referring to her particular attitude toward the anonymity of hard work that is done well. If I became a successful criminal defense attorney, while my name might become somewhat more famous than that of a sharecropper, but my belief that the work is more important as a collection of effort, rather than a set of individual deeds designed to glorify my reputation, matches Piercy’s notion that a successful career is like a “Hopi [vase] that held cornput in museums [even though] you know they were made to be used” (24-25).

In Dagoberto Gilb’s essay “Work Union,” the audience is people who think that their jobs are unrewarding and who believe that there are many jobs out there that are not worth their time. I am a big believer in the value of labor; for example, I’ve always found it ironic that the vast majority of people who don’t have to work on Labor Day are members of the white-collar professions. The hardest workers, particularly those in the service industries, all have to find their way to work on that day, and often have to work even harder than normal, because the descending hordes of members of the upper classes on restaurants and stores make for a longer workday. That said, one reason that I am in college in the first place is to avoid that sort of career for myself. Without plumbers, HVAC technicians, janitors, and street workers, the infrastructure of our lives would shut down completely. However, that doesn’t mean that I want to do that sort of work myself. I don’t view it as beneath me – in fact, I have such a clear knowledge of the hard work and physical stress involved in that sort of vocation that I know I would rather do something else. Gilb’s audience, at least in his own opinion, looks down on laborers, because it is comprised of people who do not appreciate how hard the life of a laborer is. One of my neighbors drove trucks over the road for almost thirty years, and the drudgery of driving, combined with the hard labor of getting out on the side of a hot (or cold) highway to fix a problem on his rig, took its toll on him, physically and emotionally. He did well financially, eventually buying five more rigs and owning his own business. However, I don’t want that hard of a life for myself. I don’t mind working long hours, but manual labor is not how I want to spend them.

Bell Hooks’ perspective in “Work Makes Life Sweet” is the closest to my own, when it comes to a point of view on work. If you can afford to buy (and keep) nicer possessions, and you can establish a solid credit profile, then your work is worthwhile. Whether the particular line of work is existentially satisfactory or not is not as important; instead, it is what you can do for yourself with the lucre you bring in from that work that brings significance.

All three of these authors had slightly different takes on the role of work in life, and the reason why we choose the jobs that we do. Despite the lyricism of Piercy’s paean praising those who can take a grinding work ethic, while I do see the beauty of a long career over time, as opposed to individual deeds, I don’t see the glory inherent in a long, shared career performing hard labor. The people who do it deserve all of our respect and commendation, but that does not mean that I want to investigate it as a vocational possibility. I also don’t feel that all (or at least most) members of the upper classes tend to look down on the hard laborer; after all, if people didn’t understand the plight of the laborer, so many of those people would not go to the time and effort to gain the educational background to avoid that sort of career for themselves. Bell Hooks, finally, does share a lot of my ideas about the proper role of work. Instead of trying to be the doctor that ends up curing cancer, making fairly good money as a pediatrician or as a family medicine general practitioner, or in the more lucrative elective practices, such as orthodontia, can provide similar levels of satisfaction – and even higher levels of material attainment.

While my beliefs may sound cynical, they are actually in line with the values of the American Dream, which has always been much more about pragmatism than idealism. Settling the Old West was more about gaining land and consolidating power than bringing religion to the lands west of the Mississippi River; the main stories of American history are about land grabs, not idealism. Similarly, work has as its end not the edification of the soul but instead the acquisition of the material.

Works Cited

Gilb, Dagoberto. “Work Union.” Hooks, Bell. “Work Makes Life Sweet.” Piercy, Marge. “To Be of Use.” Web. Retrieved 10 February 2012 from http://www.panhala.net/Archive/To_be_of_Use.html

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What Does “Work” Mean to You?

• Tammy Erickson

Lately I’ve been listening closely to how people use the word “work.” I’ve noticed something . . .and formed a hypothesis that I’d like to test with you. The dictionary provides a number of alternate definitions and meanings for the word. Here are some of them: work [wurk] 1. exertion or effort directed to produce […]

Lately I’ve been listening closely to how people use the word “work.” I’ve noticed something . . .and formed a hypothesis that I’d like to test with you.

• TE Tamara J. Erickson has authored the books Retire Retirement , Plugged In , and What’s Next, Gen X? She is the author or co-author of five Harvard Business Review articles and the book Workforce Crisis . Erickson was named one of the top 50 global business thinkers for 2011.

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On Humans: Grappling with the Intersection of Nature, Work + Technology

Understanding the Essence of Work

By Mark Abbott

In my first essay on Work (with a capital W), I presented the notion that work is essential for scaling Maslow’s pyramid of Needs, that work helps us understand what we like, what we’re good at doing, what kinds of people we enjoy working with, what matters to us, etc.

In this essay, I want to unpack a bit more about what Work is and isn’t and a couple of suggestions regarding how to best manifest Work.

Work (with a capital W), just like each of us, is quite uniquely a personal thing.

For some of us, Work is building a company. For others, teaching. For others, coaching. For others, writing. For others, it’s playing a sport (aka professional athletes). For others, it’s building things like houses, furniture, computers, fences or cars. For others, it’s designing. For others, it’s protecting. For others, it’s fishing. For others, it’s caring for others. For others, investigating. For others, writing songs, singing or playing an instrument. For others, researching. For others, flying a plane. For others, cooking. For others, publishing or teaching. For others, painting. For others, writing code. For others, doing an array of very different but complimentary things (aka polymaths).

We could go on and on and on.

My hope is I’ve made it clear that Work can be almost anything you not only love to do but something others value so much that you get to be paid for doing that thing you do so well.

Work can be almost anything you not only love to do but something others value so much that you get to be paid for doing that thing you do so well.

Work (with a capital W) is always done for others and with others. If it’s done solely for yourself, and if it involves no one else, then hopefully it’s done for you or to help you because you’re paying for that thing with your time.

The Art and Energy of Work

One of things I’ve noticed about Work is you can see it.

You know when you’re doing it.

You know when someone else is doing it and/or has done it.

I can’t quite explain it. It radiates energy. You can feel the pride… the craftsmanship… the soul. Below is a picture of me finishing some Work.

Humor me as I go, what my wife calls, “woo woo” on you for a second. I occasionally paint. Some of the pieces aren’t very good, in my opinion. That said, of the pieces I felt compelled to paint, those pieces have a certain “je ne sais quoi” that I cannot explain. I’m not a trained painter, but they’re actually not bad (below is a picture with one piece I love and another I think is just ok). People genuinely like some of my art Work. The best pieces each have a story. They have a purpose. They have an essence that makes them Work (aka Works of Art).

Allow me another personal example.

I’m a fledgling writer. The irony is that I have a form of dyslexia, and the truth is that writing is hard for me. It takes me draft after draft after draft to create something that Works for me. After sixty plus years of living, and over fifty of working (and Working), I’ve got so much I want to share through writing and I’ve tried to get help with getting my thoughts onto paper. One of my persistent issues is that every time I’ve attempted to create the Works I’m envisioning through another person (i.e., leveraging a ghost writer), the effort has failed. It’s not that they cannot write. They can — that’s what they do for a living — and I have a pretty good track record in terms of hiring talented people. No, it has nothing to do with them or my hiring abilities. It has to do with the fact that they can’t do my Work.

They can’t frame an idea the way I want to frame it. They don’t have access to the words that Work for me… my tone… my alliteration… my sense for the proper depth of an idea… for that specific thought in just that place… knowing what’s necessary or best to be expanded upon later. More to the point, when I read their words, I don’t read my words. I don’t feel the essence of what I’m trying to convey. What I find myself reading just doesn’t seem to work. It’s not my Work and it’s fairly clear it’s not their Work.

If you read this far, I’m fairly confident you get what I’m trying to convey. You know when you’re proud of your Work. You know when you’ve hit your aim. You know when it’s done, and done right. You know when your Work is ready for others to have, to consume, to enjoy, to depend on, to buy, etc.

You know when you’re proud of your Work. You know when you’ve hit your aim.

In my opinion, the consumer knows it too. If it is work (with a lowercase w, which may be defined as what we “have” to do as opposed to what we “get” to do), we can see it. We can smell it. We can taste it. This is just one of the reasons we fail ourselves and others when we try to micromanage people, or worse, take their work from them and do it ourselves.

Each of us is extraordinarily unique, and so is and will be our Work. The best of us have a goal/need, and if we want/need someone else to fulfill it, we must let them do their Work. If their Work doesn’t hit the mark, it is likely either about us (because we weren’t clear) or them (because they weren’t capable of doing it, or didn’t want to do it, or didn’t have the capacity to do it).

Either way, it’s always because we didn’t set the proper stage for Work.

The best of us have a goal/need, and if we want/need someone else to fulfill it, we must let them do their Work.

One of the many things I suspect will happen as people read my series of essays on Work is they will assume I’m pushing people just to work. Some may believe I’m pedaling a get-rich-quick series, or a success series, or a grow-fast series, or here’s-how-to-kill-your-competition series, or how-to-increase-our-GDP series or how-to-get-people-to-work-harder series.

None of those are remotely true.

My aim is to help more and more people live meaningful, productive lives

My aim is to help more and more people live meaningful, productive lives… to do great Work… to see that taking care of themselves and others is essential for doing great Work… to take the time to do great Work… to not try to do too much work so that all we produce is work (lowercase w)… to seek out and embrace Work… to be proud of the Work we do… to do Work that’s meaningful… to do Work that matters… to do Work that makes life better… to recognize that work is an essential part of Life… and that Work is an essential part of achieving self-esteem and ultimately self-actualization.

Until next time, may you lead, listen and Work with confidence and humility.

Executive Summary

• Work (with a capital W) is unique to each individual.
• Work can be almost anything you love to do — something others value so much that you get to be paid for doing that thing you do so well.
• If it is work (with a lowercase w), we can see it. We can smell it. We can taste it. It lacks the essence, art and energy of true Work.
• When we have a goal or need, and if we want or need someone else to fulfill it, we must let them do their Work. We fail ourselves and others when we try to micromanage people, or worse, take their work from them and do it ourselves.
• The essence of Work takes many forms, each worthy of recognition.

Action Steps

• Consider what Work energizes you, then find ways to do more of it.
• If you lead others, find out what Work they love to do. Find more ways to incorporate their gifts of Work into what they do.
• Seek out opportunities to set the stage for Work, to set people up for a positive experience.
• People take great pride in their Work. Acknowledge them for doing so.

About the Author

This article is part of a series by Mark Abbott. Mark is the Visionary / Founder of Ninety.io and a sought-after business leader, writer and executive-team coach. With nearly four decades of experience with early stage, small and mid-sized companies as a lender, investor and business builder, his passion centers on helping people build extraordinarily productive, humane and resilient companies.

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Work and the Secret to Well-Being

Welcome to the New Age of Work

Being Human 101

What Makes Work Meaningful?

• Original Paper
• Published: 20 February 2023
• Volume 185 , pages 835–845, ( 2023 )

Cite this article

• Samuel A. Mortimer   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4771-5543 1  

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2 Citations

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Prior scholarly approaches to meaningful work have largely fallen into two camps. One focuses on identifying how work can contribute to a meaningful life. The other studies the antecedents and outcomes of workers experiencing their work as meaningful. Neither of these approaches, however, captures what people look for when they seek meaningful work—or so I argue. In this paper, I give a new, commitment-based account of meaningful work by focusing on the reasons people have to choose meaningful work over other options. I draw on philosopher Ruth Chang’s account of voluntarist reasons (reasons that arise from an act of the will) to argue that commitments can create distinctive reasons to pursue certain work. It is the presence of these distinctive reasons that makes work meaningful.

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A Normative Meaning of Meaningful Work

Christopher Michaelson

Work is Meaningful if There are Good Reasons to do it: A Revisionary Conceptual Analysis of ‘Meaningful Work’

Jens Jørund Tyssedal

Ethics and the Future of Meaningful Work: Introduction to the Special Issue

Evgenia I. Lysova, Jennifer Tosti-Kharas, … Peter McGhee

Data availability

There are no data used in this theoretical article.

Rosso et al. elsewhere distinguish between the terms ‘meaning’ and ‘meaningfulness,’ but here they are referring to both ( 2010 : 95): “Following tradition, we also use the broad phrase ‘meaning of work’ to encompass both meaning and meaningfulness.” In other words, their point here is that the empirical literatures on both meaning and meaningfulness at work center on individuals’ perceptions of their work.

A similar argument is made by William MacAskill ( 2014 ), who argues that if one wants to support certain charitable causes, it is in general better to pursue a lucrative career that will enable one to pay multiple other people to do the relevant charitable work than to become a charitable worker oneself. After all, if one only cares about the charitable goal, it should not matter who accomplishes it, and if one can make enough in a non-charitable role to pay the salaries of multiple charity workers, then one can do more to achieve the goal by donating a large proportion of one’s earnings to support those workers than by merely becoming one such worker.

The notion of being on a par I borrow from Chang ( 2017 ), and I will discuss Chang’s account in detail in the next section.

Note that this commitment need not be lifelong for it to make the disability activism position a more meaningful job to choose now than the mosquito net job.

I am assuming that if it is objectively worthwhile for someone to participate in some work, then they have objective reasons to participate.

That there is an objective reason to pursue certain work does not mean that there is always, on balance, greater reason to pursue that work. Even if an option has some value, there may be stronger reasons to avoid choosing it.

Chang suggests that we can only generate voluntarist reasons when the relevant normative criteria do not allow fully determinate measurement of the difference in choice-worthiness between the options. However, Chang and others have argued that this is likely to obtain in many, if not most, of the decision-making scenarios we face (Parfit, 2016 ; Chang, 2013 , p. 178; but c.f. Dorr, Nebel, & Zuehl, 2022 ).

On the other hand, some philosophical discussions of flourishing emphasize the importance of pursuing one’s interests, suggesting that meaningful work may in at least some cases also contribute to a meaningful life (e.g., Feinberg, 1974 ).

Achor, S., Reece, A., Kellerman, G.R., Robichaux, A.: 9 out of 10 people are willing to earn less money to do more-meaningful work. Harvard Business Review (2018). https://hbr.org/2018/11/9-out-of-10-people-are-willing-to-earn-less-money-to-do-more-meaningful-work

Arthur, M. B., & Rousseau, D. M. (Eds.). (2001). The Boundaryless Career: A New Employment Principle for a New Organizational Era . Oxford University Press.

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Acknowledgements

There are many people to whom I owe my gratitude for helping me develop this paper. Special thanks go to Rob Hughes for his mentorship, encouragement, and critical comments at every stage of this paper’s development. I am also deeply grateful to Amy Sepinwall, Katherine Klein, Alan Strudler, Brian Berkey, Christopher Michaelson, three anonymous reviewers, and audiences at the Society for Business Ethics Annual Meeting, the Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, and the British Academy of Management Annual Conference for their invaluable comments. Any errors remain my own.

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Mortimer, S.A. What Makes Work Meaningful?. J Bus Ethics 185 , 835–845 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-023-05356-6

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Work Values Essay

Introduction, work values, employee commitment, influence of work values on employee commitment.

The purpose of this essay will be to determine the influence of individual work values on the commitment of an employee to an organization. This essay will seek to define the meaning of work values and also employee commitment and how work values influence the commitment of an employee to an organization.

The type of organization that will be evaluated will be a multinational telecommunications corporation (Vodafone) that has a high number of employees and handles a large customer base.

The essay will seek to determine the kind of organizational factors that exist within the multinational company that affect the work values and organizational commitment of the employees as well as the available structures of work values that are used in many multinational organizations around the world.

The discussion will mostly involve the use of American literature and research work that is available for the last ten years which has offered extensive feedback on the topic.

The focus on Vodafone will be suitable for this study given the diverse number of employees that work for the multinational company around its global offices. The company employs over 80,000 employees around the world who are from diverse ethnic backgrounds and possess individual work values that are necessary when it comes to their job performance.

The study will therefore discuss the concepts of work values and employee commitment by focusing on the global telecommunications company so as to gain a more practical interaction of how work values influence or affect employee commitment to an organization.

The concept of work values has continued to receive increasing interest amongst various scholars and researchers around the world, especially with regards to its influence on the individual commitment of an employee to their organization.

To better understand the concept, work values are referred to as the set of traits or qualities that are considered to be important by an employee in the performance of their work duties and responsibilities. They are also defined as those qualities that employees within an organization desire to have when performing their work.

Work values are viewed as measures of employee performance since they determine the efficiency and effectiveness of a worker when it comes to completing certain tasks within the organization.

They also provide a measure of the work preferences, ethics, culture and beliefs of the employee, which prove to be beneficial when it comes to performing organizational tasks. Work values also provide a measure of personal need and satisfaction as they allow an employee to reflect upon their individual goals and objectives in the workplace and what they have to do to satisfy their needs (Levy 2003).

Dose (Cited by Matic 2008) defined work values as the standards of evaluation related to work, which employees used to measure the importance and significance of work preferences.

Dose further categorises work values to fall under two dimensions with the first dealing with work values that are based on moral dimensions and the second dealing with the degree of consensus that exists on the importance and desirability of particular work values.

According to Matic (2008), the very first studies of work values were conducted to explain the differences of employee performance and worker motivation when it came to job performance.

Researchers such as Hoppe and Hofstede, who were some of the theorists that conducted early studies on the effect of work values, had their research work incorporated into the development of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and also Herzberg’s explanation of intrinsic and extrinsic needs.

Matic (2008) noted that Hofstede and Hoppe’s work played an important part in providing a theoretical explanation of how work values motivated employees to perform their work duties.

Based on both current and recent research, work values present a strong implication for many managers as they determine the level of motivation an employee will have towards their job and also the kind of job satisfaction employees will derive from performing their work duties.

Before assigning any duties and tasks, managers usually observe the work values of their employees so that they can be able to determine what work ethic and motivation they possess when carrying out their work duties.

Vodafone, as a multinational corporation, is constantly facing changing and evolving management practices, which has forced its management to continually re-evaluate the work duties and responsibilities of their employees.

In doing so, the company also has to consider the individual work values of its employees to ensure that the management practices and work duties do not conflict with the individual behaviours of an employee. Therefore identifying the work values of an employee plays an important role in redefining work duties and responsibilities within an organization.

According to Hofstede (2001), the work values possessed by an individual worker are usually significant for two reasons; the first of which being that they provide an excellent measure of an employee’s work ethic since they are determined by sociological and cultural factors.

The second reason is that work values have a direct impact on the various faucets and activities that occur within an organization such as employee motivation, job satisfaction, conflict resolution and employee commitment to the organization.

As a result of this, many organizations around the world have restructured their activities to encompass work values, which will be important in achieving value congruence in business operations (Hofstede 2001).

Because the image of an organization is closely linked to the work ethics the organization wants to convey to its various stakeholders, the individual work values of an employee in all the levels of management become increasingly important, especially for a corporation such as Vodafone that has a large employee base.

Work values become important since they provide managers with a perspective of what is right and wrong within an organization

According to Matic (2008), work values encompass emotions, cognitive processes and behaviour that are related to the performance of work duties and responsibilities where employees demonstrate work value characteristics such as individuality, punctuality, attentiveness, subjectiveness and cooperation towards their organizational tasks and duties.

The personality of an individual is also an important factor when it comes to determining the work values of an employee and this, therefore, contributes to the overall performance of an employee in their work duties. The implication of work values on multinational corporations becomes important, especially when it comes to organizational performance and leadership.

Given the large numbers of employees who work for Vodafone, job performance becomes a top priority due to the large volume of customer queries that are handled by the global telecommunications company in a day or an hour.

Leadership also becomes important to such an organization, especially when managers have to delegate certain roles to their junior staff, such as monitoring the floor operations of the call centre or monitoring the number of calls that have been made in an hour.

Apart from organizational performance and leadership, other implications of work values to an organization are that they assist managers to prepare employees during periods of change, they assist human resource managers to develop suitable and effective reward/compensation systems, they affect changes in management practices and leadership styles and they facilitate open communication within an organization (Li, 2008).

Employee commitment, which is at times referred to as organizational commitment is the psychological attachment that an employee has to their place of work.

The most common measures that are used to determine the commitment of an employee to an organization include job satisfaction which deals with the feelings an employee has towards their job and organizational identification which is the degree of belonging and oneness that an employee derives from working for an organization.

To further explain employee commitment, Meyer and Allen developed a three-component model of commitment that would be used to identify the various types of commitment that existed within an organization (Mutheveloo and Rose 2005).

The affective commitment level, which is the first part of the model refers to the positive emotional attachment that an employee demonstrates towards their workplace. According to Meyer and Allen, employee’s who were affectively committed to an organization were able to identify with the goals and objectives of an organization which in turn enabled them to have sense of belonging.

Employees who demonstrated affective commitment usually did so because they personally wanted to display attachment and loyalty to the organization. The second part of the model was referred to as continuance commitment which refers to an individual’s commitment to the organization based on their perceived cost of losing organizational membership.

This perceived loss is in terms of economic benefits which the employee gains from committing to an organization, social costs such as friendship ties with co-workers and also financial costs such as rewards and compensations that arise from belonging to an organization (Mutheveloo and Rose 2005).

The third part of Meyer and Allen’s commitment model was normative commitment which refers the feelings of obligation that an employee has towards an organization. These feelings are usually derived from a variety of sources such as when an organization has invested in the training and development of the employee.

An employee in such a case feels obligated to the organization to work extra hard in their work duties so that they can be able to repay the organization for the training exercise. This three-component model of employee commitment therefore explains the various levels/types of commitment that an employee has towards an organization.

According to Mutheveloo and Rose (2005), the concept of employee commitment forms the basis for most human resource management activities within an organization as most human resource policies are directed towards increasing the level of employee commitment with an organization.

Various researchers such as Meyer et al. have set out to identify the various types of employee commitment by viewing them as constructs that can be used to explain the attitudes and behaviours of employees when performing their work duties.

Meyer et al. developed three groups that would be used to explain employee commitment to an organization with the first group being commitment to their work or job where employees demonstrated feelings of attachment towards their job and work responsibilities. Employees with this kind of commitment derived a sense of job satisfaction because of their commitment to work (Mutheveloo and Rose 2005).

Work/job commitment according to the researchers did not however refer to the level of commitment that an employee had to the organization or their jobs. It instead focused on the level of their commitment towards the employment itself where an employee’s sense of duty towards their work was seen as a strong measure of employee commitment.

The second group according to Meyer et al. was career/professional commitment where employees demonstrated a sense of commitment or attachment to jobs that guaranteed them career progression. This category also explained employee attachment to be in the form of any professional training offered to an employee that was meant to improve their professional qualifications (Mutheveloo and Rose 2005).

The third category that would be used to explain employee commitment according to Meyer et al. was organizational commitment which refers to the willingness of employees to accept organizational goals, objectives, beliefs and values as their own by working to achieve them.

The researchers noted organizational commitment was a subset of employee commitment as it required the full involvement and participation of employees in work-related activities Other researchers who developed models that could be used to explain employee commitment within an organization include Angle and Perry with their 1981 model of value commitment, O’Reilly and Chatman with their multidimensional model of compliance, identification and internalization and Jaros et al. with their multidimensional model of affective, continuance and moral levels of employee commitment (Muthuveloo and Rose 2005).

These categorizations and models of employee commitment demonstrate the importance of employee commitment when it comes to motivation to perform work duties within the workplace.

Vodafone has conducted various employee satisfaction surveys to determine the level of commitment that its employees have to the company. These surveys usually take place once every year and they are usually conducted with the sole purpose of determining employee commitment to the global telecommunications company.

The survey also assesses job security, career progression within the company, management practices of senior executives within the organization as well as the overall satisfaction of employees within the organization. The two most important indicators that are used in the survey include employee commitment and employee satisfaction as they form the benchmark of Vodafone in all the international and local divisional offices.

According to researchers such as Mottaz, Bruning and Snyder, work values play a significant role in the commitment of an employee to an organization, especially when the work values manifest themselves in the behaviour of the employee.

These researchers highlight the fact that employee commitment usually arises from a set of values displayed by an employee towards their work for an extended period of time. Researchers such as Huang, Kidron and Charanyanada have viewed work values to be a major influence of employee commitment because work values strengthen the attachment an employee has towards their organization.

Charanyanada in his 1980 study highlighted the fact that an employee’s investment of time and energy demonstrated the reciprocal relationship that existed between commitment and work values (Ho 2006).

Since work values encompass the behaviour and personality of an individual, the interaction that exists between the individual’s personal characteristics and their work environment is termed to be dynamic as it determines the level of commitment that the employee will have towards the organization.

If the interaction is weakened over time, the individual might lose their sense of commitment forcing them to leave the organization and if the interaction is reinforced the individual might decide to increase their level commitment to the organization by engaging in more work duties.

The various characteristics that make up an employee’s work values, therefore, have a direct influence on the commitment of the employee to the organization (Ho 2006).

Work values according Wollack (cited by Ho 2006) are an important construct of employee commitment to an organization as they play an integral role when it comes to influencing the affective responses of an employee in their place of work. Wollack argues that the work values an employee possesses are usually gained from past work experience within the organization and they, therefore, play an important in determining how an employee will perform their work duties within the organization.

Wollack continues further with his argument on the influence work values have on the commitment of an employee by stating that the personal characteristics of an individual employee usually interact with the stimuli and environmental conditions that exist in the workplace to form the work values that an employee possesses (Ho 2006).

According to other researchers such as Brown who conducted his studies in 1996, Mathieu and Zajac who conducted their studies in 1990 and Rabinowitz and Hall who conducted their studies on work values in 1977, work values have an effect on the overall commitment of an employee to the organization as they represent the three work attitudes that are required from all employees which include job involvement, career salience and organizational commitment.

Because work values represent the psychological investment an employee has placed on their work, they play a great role in determining whether an employee will remain loyal and attached to the organization.

Rokeach concedes that work values are usually gained during the socialisation process that an employee goes through once they become oriented to the organization. Rokeach also concedes that the most valuable socialisation for a human being usually occurs in the home during their formative years and at work when they begin to shape their careers (Ho 2006).

Other researchers who have conducted investigations into the relationship between work values and organizational commitment include Putti et al. in 1989 (cited by Ho 2006) where they noted that the intrinsic work values of an employee had a more direct impact on employee commitment when compared to the extrinsic work values.

Intrinsic values refer to those factors that determine whether the employee’s work is interesting or challenging while the extrinsic values refer to the job benefits an employee gains from tasks that are unrelated to the work job. An example of an extrinsic value is good pension plans, holiday allowances and good medical cover (Ho 2006).

Employees working for multinational telecommunication companies such as Vodafone have demonstrated both extrinsic and intrinsic work values as they both determine the rates of employee turnover in the company, employee motivation and job satisfaction.

According to Tayyab and Tariq (2001 cited by Ho 2006), intrinsic work values were related to normative or norm-based employee commitment to an organization while the extrinsic work values had a relation to the reward-based commitment employee demonstrated towards an organization.

The two authors also identified the existence of a positive correlation between intrinsic work values and the commitment of employees by particularly focusing on executives who worked for the private sector. Based on this relationship, they were able to ascertain that these executives were more committed to an organization when their personal work values were in congruence with those of their direct line managers (Ho 2006).

Huang noted that work values such as employee responsibility and personal achievement were perfect indicators of the level of employee commitment as well as job satisfaction and involvement. Huang also believed that the more work values an employee possessed, the higher their level of commitment to the organization.

Other researchers Lee and Chung (2001, cited by Ho 2006) identified the instrumental work values that exist within most multinational corporations such as Vodafone that have an impact on employee commitment within an organization.

These work values include the stability and freedom of anxious considerations which according to the two researchers was the strongest influencing factor of employee commitment to an organization.

The consideration of economic security was the second most important factor that influenced employee commitment followed by social interaction considerations which involved the social interactions that employees had with their colleagues in the workplace.

The consideration of stability and freedom had a direct influence on the retention commitment of an employee, which meant that low job stability was more than likely to contribute to high employee turnover rates (Ho 2006).

The consideration of security and economic costs directly influenced the effort commitment of an employee where the amount of economic compensation, pension benefits, medical allowance and other employee benefits determined the level of input they placed in their work duties.

The social interaction consideration had the greatest influence on the value commitment of an employee where the social relationships an employee is able to have in an organization determine the level of their commitment to the organization.

Properly identifying the intrinsic and extrinsic factors/work values that are possessed by each individual employee will contribute further to the proper understanding of how work values can be used to improve organizational performance.

This discussion has dealt with the concepts of work values and employee commitment within an organization and also how work values influence employee commitment to an organization. Various research work and studies have been conducted on whether work values affect employee commitment and this study has been able to refer to these works so as to build the discussion.

As noted in the study, most of the findings have demonstrated that work values have an effect or influence on employee commitment as they determine the level of motivation and job satisfaction and employee has towards their job.

Work values play an important role in determining the intrinsic and extrinsic work values possessed by an employee when performing their work duties. The study has therefore been able to ascertain that work values play a significant role in the commitment of an employee to an organization.

Hofstede, G., (2001) Culture’s consequences: comparing values, behaviours, institutions and organizations across nations . Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications

Ho, C. C., (2006) A study of the relationships between work values, job involvement and organizational commitment among Taiwanese nurses . Published Thesis. Queensland, Australia: Queensland University of Technology

Levy, P. E., (2003) Industrial/organizational psychology: understanding the workplace. Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin

Li, W., (2008) Demographic effects of work values and their management implications. Journal of Business Ethics , 81, pp 875-885

Matic, J. L., (2008) Cultural differences in employee work values and their implications for management. Management , Vol.13, No.2, pp 93-104

Muthuveloo, R., and Rose, R., (2005) Typology of organizational commitment. American Journal of Applied Science , Vol.2, No. 6, pp 1078-1081

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• The four main types of essay | Quick guide with examples

The Four Main Types of Essay | Quick Guide with Examples

Published on September 4, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on July 23, 2023.

An essay is a focused piece of writing designed to inform or persuade. There are many different types of essay, but they are often defined in four categories: argumentative, expository, narrative, and descriptive essays.

Argumentative and expository essays are focused on conveying information and making clear points, while narrative and descriptive essays are about exercising creativity and writing in an interesting way. At university level, argumentative essays are the most common type. 

In high school and college, you will also often have to write textual analysis essays, which test your skills in close reading and interpretation.

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Table of contents

Argumentative essays, expository essays, narrative essays, descriptive essays, textual analysis essays, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about types of essays.

An argumentative essay presents an extended, evidence-based argument. It requires a strong thesis statement —a clearly defined stance on your topic. Your aim is to convince the reader of your thesis using evidence (such as quotations ) and analysis.

Argumentative essays test your ability to research and present your own position on a topic. This is the most common type of essay at college level—most papers you write will involve some kind of argumentation.

The essay is divided into an introduction, body, and conclusion:

• The introduction provides your topic and thesis statement
• The body presents your evidence and arguments
• The conclusion summarizes your argument and emphasizes its importance

The example below is a paragraph from the body of an argumentative essay about the effects of the internet on education. Mouse over it to learn more.

A common frustration for teachers is students’ use of Wikipedia as a source in their writing. Its prevalence among students is not exaggerated; a survey found that the vast majority of the students surveyed used Wikipedia (Head & Eisenberg, 2010). An article in The Guardian stresses a common objection to its use: “a reliance on Wikipedia can discourage students from engaging with genuine academic writing” (Coomer, 2013). Teachers are clearly not mistaken in viewing Wikipedia usage as ubiquitous among their students; but the claim that it discourages engagement with academic sources requires further investigation. This point is treated as self-evident by many teachers, but Wikipedia itself explicitly encourages students to look into other sources. Its articles often provide references to academic publications and include warning notes where citations are missing; the site’s own guidelines for research make clear that it should be used as a starting point, emphasizing that users should always “read the references and check whether they really do support what the article says” (“Wikipedia:Researching with Wikipedia,” 2020). Indeed, for many students, Wikipedia is their first encounter with the concepts of citation and referencing. The use of Wikipedia therefore has a positive side that merits deeper consideration than it often receives.

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An expository essay provides a clear, focused explanation of a topic. It doesn’t require an original argument, just a balanced and well-organized view of the topic.

Expository essays test your familiarity with a topic and your ability to organize and convey information. They are commonly assigned at high school or in exam questions at college level.

The introduction of an expository essay states your topic and provides some general background, the body presents the details, and the conclusion summarizes the information presented.

A typical body paragraph from an expository essay about the invention of the printing press is shown below. Mouse over it to learn more.

The invention of the printing press in 1440 changed this situation dramatically. Johannes Gutenberg, who had worked as a goldsmith, used his knowledge of metals in the design of the press. He made his type from an alloy of lead, tin, and antimony, whose durability allowed for the reliable production of high-quality books. This new technology allowed texts to be reproduced and disseminated on a much larger scale than was previously possible. The Gutenberg Bible appeared in the 1450s, and a large number of printing presses sprang up across the continent in the following decades. Gutenberg’s invention rapidly transformed cultural production in Europe; among other things, it would lead to the Protestant Reformation.

A narrative essay is one that tells a story. This is usually a story about a personal experience you had, but it may also be an imaginative exploration of something you have not experienced.

Narrative essays test your ability to build up a narrative in an engaging, well-structured way. They are much more personal and creative than other kinds of academic writing . Writing a personal statement for an application requires the same skills as a narrative essay.

A narrative essay isn’t strictly divided into introduction, body, and conclusion, but it should still begin by setting up the narrative and finish by expressing the point of the story—what you learned from your experience, or why it made an impression on you.

Mouse over the example below, a short narrative essay responding to the prompt “Write about an experience where you learned something about yourself,” to explore its structure.

Since elementary school, I have always favored subjects like science and math over the humanities. My instinct was always to think of these subjects as more solid and serious than classes like English. If there was no right answer, I thought, why bother? But recently I had an experience that taught me my academic interests are more flexible than I had thought: I took my first philosophy class.

Before I entered the classroom, I was skeptical. I waited outside with the other students and wondered what exactly philosophy would involve—I really had no idea. I imagined something pretty abstract: long, stilted conversations pondering the meaning of life. But what I got was something quite different.

A young man in jeans, Mr. Jones—“but you can call me Rob”—was far from the white-haired, buttoned-up old man I had half-expected. And rather than pulling us into pedantic arguments about obscure philosophical points, Rob engaged us on our level. To talk free will, we looked at our own choices. To talk ethics, we looked at dilemmas we had faced ourselves. By the end of class, I’d discovered that questions with no right answer can turn out to be the most interesting ones.

The experience has taught me to look at things a little more “philosophically”—and not just because it was a philosophy class! I learned that if I let go of my preconceptions, I can actually get a lot out of subjects I was previously dismissive of. The class taught me—in more ways than one—to look at things with an open mind.

A descriptive essay provides a detailed sensory description of something. Like narrative essays, they allow you to be more creative than most academic writing, but they are more tightly focused than narrative essays. You might describe a specific place or object, rather than telling a whole story.

Descriptive essays test your ability to use language creatively, making striking word choices to convey a memorable picture of what you’re describing.

A descriptive essay can be quite loosely structured, though it should usually begin by introducing the object of your description and end by drawing an overall picture of it. The important thing is to use careful word choices and figurative language to create an original description of your object.

Mouse over the example below, a response to the prompt “Describe a place you love to spend time in,” to learn more about descriptive essays.

On Sunday afternoons I like to spend my time in the garden behind my house. The garden is narrow but long, a corridor of green extending from the back of the house, and I sit on a lawn chair at the far end to read and relax. I am in my small peaceful paradise: the shade of the tree, the feel of the grass on my feet, the gentle activity of the fish in the pond beside me.

My cat crosses the garden nimbly and leaps onto the fence to survey it from above. From his perch he can watch over his little kingdom and keep an eye on the neighbours. He does this until the barking of next door’s dog scares him from his post and he bolts for the cat flap to govern from the safety of the kitchen.

With that, I am left alone with the fish, whose whole world is the pond by my feet. The fish explore the pond every day as if for the first time, prodding and inspecting every stone. I sometimes feel the same about sitting here in the garden; I know the place better than anyone, but whenever I return I still feel compelled to pay attention to all its details and novelties—a new bird perched in the tree, the growth of the grass, and the movement of the insects it shelters…

Sitting out in the garden, I feel serene. I feel at home. And yet I always feel there is more to discover. The bounds of my garden may be small, but there is a whole world contained within it, and it is one I will never get tired of inhabiting.

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Though every essay type tests your writing skills, some essays also test your ability to read carefully and critically. In a textual analysis essay, you don’t just present information on a topic, but closely analyze a text to explain how it achieves certain effects.

Rhetorical analysis

A rhetorical analysis looks at a persuasive text (e.g. a speech, an essay, a political cartoon) in terms of the rhetorical devices it uses, and evaluates their effectiveness.

The goal is not to state whether you agree with the author’s argument but to look at how they have constructed it.

The introduction of a rhetorical analysis presents the text, some background information, and your thesis statement; the body comprises the analysis itself; and the conclusion wraps up your analysis of the text, emphasizing its relevance to broader concerns.

The example below is from a rhetorical analysis of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech . Mouse over it to learn more.

King’s speech is infused with prophetic language throughout. Even before the famous “dream” part of the speech, King’s language consistently strikes a prophetic tone. He refers to the Lincoln Memorial as a “hallowed spot” and speaks of rising “from the dark and desolate valley of segregation” to “make justice a reality for all of God’s children.” The assumption of this prophetic voice constitutes the text’s strongest ethical appeal; after linking himself with political figures like Lincoln and the Founding Fathers, King’s ethos adopts a distinctly religious tone, recalling Biblical prophets and preachers of change from across history. This adds significant force to his words; standing before an audience of hundreds of thousands, he states not just what the future should be, but what it will be: “The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.” This warning is almost apocalyptic in tone, though it concludes with the positive image of the “bright day of justice.” The power of King’s rhetoric thus stems not only from the pathos of his vision of a brighter future, but from the ethos of the prophetic voice he adopts in expressing this vision.

Literary analysis

A literary analysis essay presents a close reading of a work of literature—e.g. a poem or novel—to explore the choices made by the author and how they help to convey the text’s theme. It is not simply a book report or a review, but an in-depth interpretation of the text.

Literary analysis looks at things like setting, characters, themes, and figurative language. The goal is to closely analyze what the author conveys and how.

The introduction of a literary analysis essay presents the text and background, and provides your thesis statement; the body consists of close readings of the text with quotations and analysis in support of your argument; and the conclusion emphasizes what your approach tells us about the text.

Mouse over the example below, the introduction to a literary analysis essay on Frankenstein , to learn more.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is often read as a crude cautionary tale about the dangers of scientific advancement unrestrained by ethical considerations. In this reading, protagonist Victor Frankenstein is a stable representation of the callous ambition of modern science throughout the novel. This essay, however, argues that far from providing a stable image of the character, Shelley uses shifting narrative perspectives to portray Frankenstein in an increasingly negative light as the novel goes on. While he initially appears to be a naive but sympathetic idealist, after the creature’s narrative Frankenstein begins to resemble—even in his own telling—the thoughtlessly cruel figure the creature represents him as. This essay begins by exploring the positive portrayal of Frankenstein in the first volume, then moves on to the creature’s perception of him, and finally discusses the third volume’s narrative shift toward viewing Frankenstein as the creature views him.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

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At high school and in composition classes at university, you’ll often be told to write a specific type of essay , but you might also just be given prompts.

Look for keywords in these prompts that suggest a certain approach: The word “explain” suggests you should write an expository essay , while the word “describe” implies a descriptive essay . An argumentative essay might be prompted with the word “assess” or “argue.”

The vast majority of essays written at university are some sort of argumentative essay . Almost all academic writing involves building up an argument, though other types of essay might be assigned in composition classes.

Essays can present arguments about all kinds of different topics. For example:

• In a literary analysis essay, you might make an argument for a specific interpretation of a text
• In a history essay, you might present an argument for the importance of a particular event
• In a politics essay, you might argue for the validity of a certain political theory

An argumentative essay tends to be a longer essay involving independent research, and aims to make an original argument about a topic. Its thesis statement makes a contentious claim that must be supported in an objective, evidence-based way.

An expository essay also aims to be objective, but it doesn’t have to make an original argument. Rather, it aims to explain something (e.g., a process or idea) in a clear, concise way. Expository essays are often shorter assignments and rely less on research.

The key difference is that a narrative essay is designed to tell a complete story, while a descriptive essay is meant to convey an intense description of a particular place, object, or concept.

Narrative and descriptive essays both allow you to write more personally and creatively than other kinds of essays , and similar writing skills can apply to both.

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What types of content does this text summarizing tool work on?

Our text summarizer works on all types of text, even full websites. You can either copy and paste the individual text into the summarizer or you can paste the link to a website at the bottom of the tool. A comprehensive list of what can be summarized is located directly underneath the tool if you are curious about exactly what pieces of content work best with the tool.

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Compressing the content of any lengthy text like a research paper, essay, report, or book is beneficial to the reader in a variety of ways. Most likely, the number one reason a person would use a summarizing tool is to avoid reading the actual text. The summary that appears contains all of the main points of interest that can be read in a fraction of the time it would take someone to read the full text. Reasons for this include not having enough time, having no interest in the topic, meeting a closely approaching deadline, and more. Another reason why someone would use a text summarizer is to better understand a text they have read. Because the tool provides a condensed version of the content provided, a reader can verify their comprehension of the main topics, themes, and points of interest. In this way, a summarizing tool can be considered as a strong study guide. The purpose may be different for summarizing websites. Of course, you can paste the link to an individual blog post, article, or news piece and receive a summary as mentioned above. However, some websites are difficult to understand differently. The purpose of a product, brand, or service may not be clear when scanning the full website. Pasting the link to that website will provide a summary of the major points on that site, which means you get a better view of what that company or product does.

Who uses text summary tools?

A wide variety of people use summary tools for different reasons. Students use tools of this kind because it’s generally required that a student must read a large quantity of text. Simply put, there’s not enough time to cover all texts required in rigorous study courses. Therefore, a text summary tool can help students to complete assignments on time while ensuring they understand the content. Students also use these tools to ensure their written content covers the necessary topic. Teachers also have a lot of content to read, whether it’s for grading papers and reviewing student assignments, or creating lesson plans. A summarizer can quickly create an overview of any text, allowing teachers to avoid reviewing content that’s unrelated to the topic or focusing on assignments that need more attention than others. Journalists and editors use tools of this kind to condense information into bite-sized pieces. This improves the legibility of headlines and introductory paragraphs. Journalists also need to quote many sources or summarize an entire speech into a single paragraph. Using a summarizer tool makes it entirely possible without making an article excruciatingly long or misinterpreting what someone says. Editors, as well, can use this tool to avoid the time-consuming nature of reviewing lengthy articles. They can paste the content in the summarizer and receive a reduced text that displays the theme of the content. Copywriters (as well as students and other types of writers) can use this tool to create a closing paragraph or statement. It can be difficult to encapsulate an entire work into a single paragraph, especially after spending so much time writing the body of the story. Many writers struggle to leave out the parts they’ve become attached to or even just find the right words to finish their piece of content. With a text summarizer, writers can simply paste the reduced version of their content as the conclusion without sacrificing the intent of the article, itself.

The Difference Between Summarizing and Paraphrasing

Please note that our Text and Website Summarizer Tool is not paraphrasing. So, what is paraphrasing, and what’s the difference between summarizing and paraphrasing? Paraphrasing is changing the text at hand into your own, unique version while keeping the meaning of the original content. Usually when paraphrasing, the content becomes shorter but is not used as a summary. Rather, paraphrasing takes the information you deem most important and converts it into your own words. Summarizing is simply converting a long piece of text into a much shorter version by only keeping the major points of interest. It is not rewritten, rather it removes the unnecessary pieces of information to provide you with a short piece that explains an entire passage. Summarizers are not plagiarism-proof, meaning if you copy and paste a generated summary, you might be flagged for plagiarism. However, other tools can rewrite a summary into a unique piece of work like our Text Rewriter tool

Here, we answer the most useful and frequent questions about text summarizing tools so you can better understand what it’s used for and how to use it properly.

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Guest Essay

I’m an Economist. Don’t Worry. Be Happy.

By Justin Wolfers

Mr. Wolfers is a professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan and a host of the “Think Like an Economist” podcast.

I, too, know that flash of resentment when grocery store prices feel like they don’t make sense. I hate the fact that a small treat now feels less like an earned indulgence and more like financial folly. And I’m concerned about my kids now that house prices look like telephone numbers.

But I breathe through it. And I remind myself of the useful perspective that my training as an economist should bring. Sometimes it helps, so I want to share it with you.

Simple economic logic suggests that neither your well-being nor mine depends on the absolute magnitude of the numbers on a price sticker.

To see this, imagine falling asleep and waking up years later to discover that every price tag has an extra zero on it. A gumball costs $2.50 instead of a quarter; the dollar store is the $10 store; and a coffee is $50. The 10-dollar bill in your wallet is now $100; and your bank statement has transformed $800 of savings into $8,000.

Importantly, the price that matters most to you — your hourly pay rate — is also 10 times as high.

What has actually changed in this new world of inflated price tags? The world has a lot more zeros in it, but nothing has really changed.

That’s because the currency that really matters is how many hours you have to work to afford your groceries, a small treat, or a home, and none of these real trade-offs have changed.

This fairy tale — with some poetic license — is roughly the story of our recent inflation. The pandemic-fueled inflationary impulse didn’t add an extra zero to every price tag, but it did something similar.

The same inflationary forces that pushed these prices higher have also pushed wages to be 22 percent higher than on the eve of the pandemic. Official statistics show that the stuff that a typical American buys now costs 20 percent more over the same period. Some prices rose a little more, some a little less, but they all roughly rose in parallel.

It follows that the typical worker can now afford two percent more stuff. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s a faster rate of improvement than the average rate of real wage growth over the past few decades .

Of course, these are population averages, and they may not reflect your reality. Some folks really are struggling. But in my experience, many folks feel that they’re falling behind, even when a careful analysis of the numbers suggests they’re not.

That’s because real people — and yes, even professional economists — tend to process the parallel rise of prices and wages in quite different ways. In brief, researchers have found that we tend to internalize the gains due to inflation and externalize the losses. These different processes yield different emotional responses.

Let’s start with higher prices. Sticker shock hurts. Even as someone who closely studies the inflation statistics, I’m still often surprised by higher prices. They feel unfair. They undermine my spending power, and my sense of control and order.

But in reality, higher prices are only the first act of the inflationary play. It’s a play that economists have seen before. In episode after episode, surges in prices have led to — or been preceded by — a proportional surge in wages.

Even though wages tend to rise hand-in-hand with prices, we tell ourselves a different story, in which the wage rises we get have nothing to do with price rises that cause them.

I know that when I ripped open my annual review letter and learned that I had gotten a larger raise than normal, it felt good. For a moment, I believed that my boss had really seen me and finally valued my contribution.

But then my economist brain took over, and slowly it sunk in that my raise wasn’t a reward for hard work, but rather a cost-of-living adjustment.

Internalizing the gain and externalizing the cost of inflation protects you from this deflating realization. But it also distorts your sense of reality.

The reason so many Americans feel that inflation is stealing their purchasing power is that they give themselves unearned credit for the offsetting wage rises that actually restore it.

Those who remember the Great Inflation of the ’60s, ’70s and early ’80s have lived through many cycles of prices rising and wages following. They understand the deal: Inflation makes life more difficult for a bit, but you’re only ever one cost-of-living adjustment away from catching up.

But younger folks — anyone under 60 — had never experienced sustained inflation rates greater than 5 percent in their adult lives. And I think this explains why they’re so angry about today’s inflation.

They haven’t seen this play before, and so they don’t know that when Act I involves higher prices, Act II usually sees wages rising to catch up. If you didn’t know there was an Act II coming, you might leave the theater at intermission, thinking you just saw a show about big corporations exploiting a pandemic to take your slice of the economic pie.

By this telling, decades of low inflation have left several generations ill equipped to deal with its return.

While older Americans understood that the pain of inflation is transitory, younger folks aren’t so sure. Inflation is a lot scarier when you fear that today’s price rises will permanently undermine your ability to make ends meet.

Perhaps this explains why the recent moderate burst of inflation has created seemingly more anxiety than previous inflationary episodes.

More generally, being an economist makes me an optimist. Social media is awash with (false) claims that we’re in a “ silent depression ,” and those who want to make American great again are certain it was once so much better.

But in reality, our economy this year is larger, more productive and will yield higher average incomes than in any prior year on record in American history. And because the United States is the world’s richest major economy, we can now say that we are almost certainly part of the richest large society in its richest year in the history of humanity.

The income of the average American will double approximately every 39 years. And so when my kids are my age, average income will be roughly double what it is today. Far from being fearful for my kids, I’m envious of the extraordinary riches their generation will enjoy.

Psychologists describe anxiety disorders as occurring when the panic you feel is out of proportion to the danger you face. By this definition, we’re in the midst of a macroeconomic anxiety attack.

And so the advice I give as an economist mirrors that I would give were I your therapist: Breathe through that anxiety, and remember that this, too, shall pass.

Justin Wolfers is a professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan and a host of the “Think Like an Economist” podcast.

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