Work Meaning in Self and World Perspective: A New Outlook on the WAMI Scale

Professional Quality of Life Among Professionals Working with People with Eating Disorders: The Interplay Between Meaning in Work, Optimism, and Career Duration

Purpose

Scientific literature findings reflect the challenges experienced by healthcare professionals (HCPs) whose work is dedicated to helping clients with eating disorders (EDs) in various treatment centers (wards). These challenges can affect the professional quality of life (comprised of compassion satisfaction, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress) of HCPs. The present study delved into this relationship and explored the moderating role of dispositional optimism and the role of career duration in ED wards in the link between meaning in work and professional quality of life.

Methods

Two hundred HCPs working in ED wards in Israel were recruited through their professional social networks. Participants completed self-report questionnaires related to socio-demographic and work data, professional quality of life, meaning in work, and dispositional optimism.

Results

Career duration in ED wards was negatively associated with secondary traumatic stress, while dispositional optimism and meaning in work were positively associated with compassion satisfaction and negatively associated with burnout and secondary traumatic stress. With respect to the moderation effect of dispositional optimism and EDs ward career duration, the findings revealed that the positive relationship between meaning in work and compassion satisfaction weakened as dispositional optimism scores increased. Additionally, the negative relationship between meaning in life and burnout was significant only when the career duration in EDs wards was less than 12.31 years.

Conclusion

HCPs working in ED wards could draw on the findings to improve their professional quality of life, especially through enhancing meaning in work. Attention should be paid especially toward HCPs with many years (>12.31) of experience in the ED wards.

Meaning in military service among reservists: Measuring the effect of prosocial motivation in a moderated-mediation model

Introduction

The meaningful commitment to serve one's country and the desire to defend others make military service unique compared to other human activities. This is especially true for the army reservists who are typically working in the civilian labor market and serving military for the short-term military training or military missions only. As scholars provide limited insights into the effects and influences of prosocial motivation on meaning in military service, this study contributes to the understanding of direct, mediated, and moderated processes which link prosocial motivation to meaning in military service among reservists. Specifically, the objective of this study was to examine both direct and indirect pathways interconnecting prosocial motivation and meaning in military service. The former is analyzed as a direct effect, while the latter includes the effects of role fit within the military environment, the soldiers' self-efficacy, as well as the socio-moral climate of military organization-that is, a variable making military service an exceptional activity.

Methods

This study followed a quantitative method analysis by utilizing a hierarchical regression analysis which revealed direct, moderating, and mediating links between the variables. The analysis was based on a sample of 375 soldiers from the Active Reserve of the Lithuanian Armed Forces, and the data were collected before and after training exercises in one military unit (repeated measures). The effects on providing meaning to military service were evaluated using the following: Occupational Self-Efficacy Scale, Prosocial Motivation Scale, Motivation at Work Scale, and Socio-Moral Climate Scale. Prosocial motivation assumes meaning in military service among reservists through different, yet related, pathways.

Results and discussion

The direct pathway confirmed that reserve soldiers with higher levels of prosocial motivation experience a higher level of meaning in service. The indirect pathway indicated that role fit mediated this relationship. Following the latter, we found that prosocial motivation was a significant predictor of both role fit and meaning in military service. Finally, we confirmed the moderated-mediation effects of self-efficacy and socio-moral climate in our suggested models. The results can be used to improve training programs for reservists.

How Should Job Crafting Interventions Be Implemented to Make Their Effects Last? Protocol for a Group Concept Mapping Study

BACKGROUND

By means of job crafting (JC) employees shape and customize their job design to align it with their preferences. Research has so far shown that such bottom-up proactivity can be stimulated via JC interventions. While the overall effectiveness behind these interventions has been supported, it is unclear how to implement these interventions to make their effects lasting.

METHODS

The overall aim of this project will be to investigate how to implement JC interventions with lasting effects. We will apply a group concept mapping (GCM) methodology, which is a mixed methods approach of exploratory nature for engaging stakeholder groups in a structured conceptualization process. As part of concept mapping procedures, brainstorming sessions will be conducted with experts in job crafting to identify factors expected to make job crafting intervention effects lasting. These factors will be sorted by similarity and rated by each participant in regard to their perceived importance and feasibility to ensure lasting, sustainable effects. The data will be analyzed using multidimensional scaling (MDS), hierarchical cluster analysis, and descriptive and inferential statistics, resulting in a visual representation of conceptually distinguished clusters representing the factors influencing the sustainability of JC interventions. In the final step, a workshop will be conducted with the participants to facilitate the interpretation of the results.

RESULTS AND CONCLUSION

This study will provide knowledge relevant to organizational practitioners and scholars who want to implement JC interventions with lasting effects. Although data collected following the group concept mapping procedure is self-reported and at risk of being simplified, the method allows for a structured conceptualization process integrating different perspectives and uncovering implicit knowledge making it suitable for studying complex phenomena. The results will not only enrich the current literature concerning the effectiveness of JC interventions but also be used to develop a practitioner-oriented toolkit outlining evidence-based recommendations concerning designing and implementing, as well as evaluating JC interventions.

Assessing meaningful work among Hungarian employees: testing psychometric properties of work and meaning inventory in employee subgroups

Background

The construct of meaningful work (MW) has become the subject of various studies. Workers who experience MW have higher career and organizational commitment, report fewer days absent, and are characterized by a higher level of well-being. The aim of this study is to test a measure of MW, the Work and Meaning Inventory by Steger et al. This measure was created on theoretical background, and it constructs MW from three dimensions: psychological meaning, meaning-making, and greater good motivation.

Methods

The analysis was conducted in a Hungarian sample (N = 2,498), using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and multiple-group CFA.

Results

The three-dimensional model of the WAMI was confirmed in the analysis. In our study, the measure proved to be reliable, even in the test–retest analysis. Moreover, the discriminant and convergent validity of the WAMI was tested, with various relevant constructs: the presence and the search for life meaning, life satisfaction, and job satisfaction. Also a multiple-group CFA was conducted with the three-factor model, confirming measurement invariance regarding sex and working position.

Conclusions

In line with the original version of the WAMI, the three-dimensional model was confirmed, with good psychometric properties in the Hungarian working context.

Social purpose in an organization from the perspective of an employee: a self-determination outlook on the meaning of work

Objective

Advancing social purpose in organizations is usually studied from the macro perspective, i.e., how it benefits organizational business goals or society more broadly. In this paper, we focus on social purpose from the perspective of the employee and propose that advancing social purpose in an organization allows individuals to fulfil an important human need for the meaning of work (MW). This study’s objective was to assess whether a volunteering Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program in a manufacturing company allows employees to fulfil their basic psychological needs for relatedness, competence, and autonomy. The data was collected through in-depth interviews with 15 employees and an analysis of artifacts.

Results

In the analysis, three main themes describing different aspects of voluntary work at the company were identified. We found that across all groups of interviewed employees the voluntary activities served the needs of (1) relatedness, (2) competence, and (3) autonomy. We conclude that CSR programs have the most positive impact on MW when they allow employees to engage in prosocial actions and satisfy those needs.

ME-Work: Development and Validation of a Modular Meaning in Work Inventory

As research on meaning in work progresses, access to theoretically integrated, differentiated survey instruments becomes crucial. In response to this demand, the present article introduces ME-Work, a modular inventory to measure meaning in work. Derived from research findings on meaning in life, the ME-Work inventory offers three modules that can be used separately or jointly. Module 1 assesses four facets of meaning in work, i.e., coherence, significance, purpose and belonging; module 2 measures the subjective assessment of work as meaningful or meaningless, and module 3 records the extent to which work is perceived as a source of meaning. We report on the development of the instrument and the results of an exploratory factor analysis in a pilot study of 115 working adults. A further study with 278 working adults provided evidence for construct and incremental validity. Relationships with meaning in life, mental health, job satisfaction, socio-moral climate, burnout and work as meaning were investigated. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the factor structure. Gender-specific analyses of the four facets of meaning's differential predictive power provided additional insights. Practical implications and further research needs are discussed.

I believe I can craft! introducing Job Crafting Self-Efficacy Scale (JCSES)

Job crafting is beneficial for employees and organizations. To better predict these behaviors, we introduce the concept of job crafting self-efficacy (JCSE) and define it as an individual's beliefs about their capability to modify the demands and resources of their job to better fit their needs. This article describes the development and validation of a scale to measure JCSE. We conducted a qualitative study to design and four quantitative studies to test the psychometric properties of this scale among Polish and American employees in both paper-and-pencil and online versions. Three independent (N1 = 364; N2 = 432; N3 = 403) confirmatory factor analyses demonstrated a good fit to a 3-factor solution comprising JCSE beliefs about increasing (a) structural job resources, (b) social job resources, and (c) challenging job demands. The 9-item JCSE Scale had good internal consistency, high time stability, and good validity. It correlated positively with general self-efficacy. JCSE explained unique variance in job crafting behaviors over and above general self-efficacy, and was more important in predicting job crafting than contextual factors. We demonstrate the role of social cognitions in shaping job redesign behaviors and provide a useful tool to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions dedicated to empowering JCSE.

Positive Emotions at Work and Job Crafting: Results From Two Prospective Studies

To date, research confirmed the effects of job crafting on the functioning of employees and organizations. In contrast, the evidence for the predictors of job crafting is limited. Based on broaden-and-build (B&B) theory, it may be assumed that high positive emotions at work would predict high job crafting behaviors at follow-ups. In line with social cognitive theory (SCT), it may be hypothesized that self-efficacy would mediate the relationship between positive emotions at work and following job crafting behaviors. The hypotheses were tested in a three-wave prospective study (Study 1, N = 124), with individual beliefs measured as the predictors. In a three-wave prospective Study 2 (N = 99), individual perceptions of collective flow at work and collective efficacy were assessed. Results of Studies 1 and 2 indicated that positive emotions at work predicted increasing structural resources, a job crafting dimension. Moreover, findings of Study 2 showed that collective flow at work predicted another job crafting dimension, i.e., increasing social resources. These results may inform good practices and help in designing individual- and team-level interventions enhancing job crafting behaviors.