Is meaningful work one of the most relevant issues for today’s workplaces? Find out more in our research tidbits.
Meaningful work: Viktor Frankl’s legacy for the 21st century
This book offers meaningful work as one of the most relevant issues for 21st century workplaces, and organisations seeking to develop leadership and drive positive change.
It uses Viktor Frankl’s legacy as a scientific and philosophical pioneer, while combining cutting edge research findings from the behavioural sciences, organisational and management research, and human resource development with outstanding examples of new work approaches of leadership from around the globe. In order to respond to 21st century demands on meaningful work, this book harnesses the power of living meaning, values, purpose and compassion in workplaces.
Beate von Devivere shows managers, human resources experts, consultants, coaches, medical experts, students and counsellors as well as all dedicated individuals, how to find meaning in their organisations, their teams and individual functions and challenges, bringing Viktor Frankl’s approach to today’s workplaces.
Integrating a wide range of knowledge and expertise, this book covers organisational development, management practice, and findings from psychology, neuroscience as well as therapeutic approaches and new work concepts. Meaningful work is promoting an integrated approach for the ‘Copernican turn’, further promoting meaningful work, purpose and a good life.
Beate von Devivere. 2018. Meaningful Work: Viktor Frankl’s Legacy for the 21st Century.
Springer International Publishing.
How fairness, responsible leadership and worthy work affect meaningful work
The present study extends the meaningful work and ethics literature by comparing three ethics-related antecedents. The second contribution of this paper is that in using a multi-dimensional MFW construct the authors offer a more fine-tuned understanding of the impact of ethical antecedents on different dimensions of MFW, such as expressing full potential and integrity with self.
Using an international data set from 879 employees and structural equation modelling, the authors confirmed an updated seven-dimension Comprehensive Meaningful Work Scale (CMWS). The structural model found that fairness, responsible leadership and worthy work are all significant and positively related to the majority of meaningfulness dimensions.
However, different antecedents are related to different dimensions of MFW, showing that a complex and multi-level combination of ethics-related practices are required to cultivate MFW. All relationships were in the expected positive direction except responsible leadership, which was negatively related to the MFW dimension of integrity with self. Across the seven dimensions of MFW, only the dimension ‘Service to Others’ was uniformly not predicted by any antecedent. However, all three antecedents significantly related to important dimensions of MFW not usually measured in the ethics literature, such as ‘Unity with Others’ and ‘Expressing Full Potential’.
In addition, the authors conducted dominance analysis to test the relative importance of the three antecedent across the MFW dimensions, and found that worthy work is the most dominant antecedent, although all three antecedents are the most dominant for at least one MFW dimension—further highlighting the importance of exploring MFW as a multi-dimensional construct. The authors discuss the implications for MFW theory and practice.
Marjolein Lips-Wiersma, Jarrod Haar & Sarah Wright. 2020. The Effect of Fairness, Responsible Leadership and Worthy Work on Multiple Dimensions of Meaningful Work.
Journal of Business Ethics, 161(1), 35–52.
Spiritual leader and leadership in religion-based organisations
In the present research, the authors qualitatively document the process by which spiritual leader and leadership emerge in religion-based organisations.
Data from 26 participants in three religion-based organisations revealed three cardinal themes that depict
(1) the development of spiritual leader (e.g., embodiment of a spiritual leader spiritual lifestyle; inspiration) and spiritual leadership (e.g., follower-based leadership),
(2) the process of developing a spiritual leader (e.g., interest/calling, personal experiences) and spiritual leadership (e.g., appointment; training), and
(3) outcomes of spiritual leader and leadership development (i.e., personal, follower and organisational growth).
Based on the results, the authors propose a model that depicts the phases involved in the development of spiritual leader/leadership in the religion-based workplace. These phases are proposed to impact the outcomes for the leader, followers, and the organisation. The implications of the results are discussed.
James J. Q. Low & Oluremi B. Ayoko. 2020. The Emergence of Spiritual Leader and Leadership in Religion-Based Organizations.
Journal of Business Ethics, 161(3), 513–530.
Multiple cultural organisational beliefs and firm performance
How does cultural heterogeneity in an organisation relate to its underlying capacity for execution and innovation? Cultural diversity is commonly thought to present a tradeoff between task coordination and creative problem solving, with diversity arising primarily through cultural differences between individuals.
In contrast, the authors propose that diversity can also exist within persons when individuals hold multiple cultural beliefs about the organisation. The authors refer to these different forms as interpersonal and intrapersonal cultural heterogeneity. The authors argue that the former tends to undermine coordination and portends worsening firm profitability, while the latter facilitates creativity and supports greater patenting success and more positive market valuations.
To evaluate these propositions, the authors use computational linguistics to identify cultural content in employee reviews of nearly 500 publicly traded firms on a leading company review website and then develop novel, time-varying measures of cultural heterogeneity.
The empirical results lend support for the two core propositions, suggesting the need to rethink the performance tradeoffs of cultural heterogeneity: it may be possible to reap the creativity benefits of higher intrapersonal heterogeneity and, at the same time, the efficiency benefits of lower interpersonal heterogeneity.
Matthew Corritore, Amir Goldberg & Sameer Srivastava. 2020. Duality in Diversity: How Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Cultural Heterogeneity Relate to Firm Performance
Administrative Science Quarterly, 65(2), 359-394.
Does religiosity matter to valuing assets in US banks?
This study examines whether religiosity is associated with the valuation multiples investors assign to fair-valued assets that are susceptible to managerial bias. Using a sample of U.S. banking firms, the author finds that the value relevance of such assets is higher for firms located in more religious counties than it is for firms located in less religious counties.
Moreover, the author finds that this result is more consistent with the ethicality trait than the risk aversion trait of more religious individuals. Additional tests show that the positive association between religiosity and value relevance of fair-valued assets is limited to firms with high fair value exposure, and it is stronger for firms with lower audit quality, lower institutional ownership, and lower analyst following.
The results of this study suggest that investors perceive the role played by religiosity, in particular ethicality, in curbing managerial accounting biases and price accounting estimates accordingly.
Lamia Chourou. 2020. Does Religiosity Matter to Value Relevance in U.S. Banking Firms?
Journal of Business Ethics, 162(3), 675–697.