Meaningful Work: Enacting a Eudaimonic Vision — ASN Events
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  2. Podium - Enacting a Eudaimonic Vision and Meaningful Work
  3. Meaningful Work: Enacting a Eudaimonic Vision

Meaningful Work: Enacting a Eudaimonic Vision (#31)

Andrew Soren 1 2
  1. Eudaimonic by Design, Toronto, ON, Canada
  2. Masters of Positive Psychology Program, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

Work is one of the most enduring and consequential life domains to consider for how meaning and purpose can impact health and well-being. This session highlights how Meaningful work has been studied within the organizational literature showing its potential to yield valued individual and organizational outcomes as well as its possibility to become a context for exploitation, stress, and burnout. Organizations that invoke meaningful work without mitigating against the risks have the potential to exploit and alienate workers. I argue that post-pandemic work trends such as the great resignation and quiet quitting may in part be considered a mass response to the incongruence between what organizations ask of their workers and what they offer in return. An alternative eudaimonic vision of the workplace is offered, rooted in Aristotle’s distant writings about virtue, ethics and the realization of personal capacities. Taking a practitioner’s view, the societal context for meaningful work (including public policy), organizational conditions (including culture, human resource practices, and leadership) as well as individual strategies for finding meaning, engagement, and fulfillment in the experience of work are described. Looking to the future, I call for greater exchange between scientific studies of work, well-being, and health with the world of organizational practice as each speaks to the limitations of the other.

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  2. Shir, N., & Ryff, C. D. (2021). Entrepreneurship, Self-Organization, and Eudaimonic Well-Being: A Dynamic Approach. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice. https://doi.org/10.1177/10422587211013798
  3. Allan, B. A., Batz-Barbarich, C., Sterling, H. M., & Tay, L. (2019). Outcomes of meaningful work: A meta-analysis. Journal of Management Studies, 56(3), 500-528. https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12406
  4. Bailey, C., Yeoman, R., Madden, A., Thompson, M., & Kerridge, G. (2019). A review of the empirical literature on meaningful work: Progress and research agenda. Human Resource Development Review, 18(1), 83-113. https://doi.org/10.1177/1534484318804653
  5. Blustein, D. L., Lysova, E. I., & Duffy, R. D. (2023). Understanding decent work and meaningful work. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 10(1), 289-314. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-031921-024847
  6. Detert, J. (2023). Let's call quiet quitting what it often is: Calibrated contributing. MIT Sloan Management Review, 64(2), 1-3.
  7. Lips-Wiersma, M., & Morris, L. (2009). Discriminating between ‘meaningful work’ and the ‘management of meaning’. Journal of Business Ethics, 88(3), 491-511. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-009-0118-9
  8. Thompson, J. A., & Bunderson, J. S. (2019). Research on work as a calling…and how to make it matter. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 6(1), 421-443. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-012218-015140
  • Please select up to 3 keywords from the following list to best describe your submission content: Business and Organizations, Career and Work, Meaning and Purpose
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