The experience and implications of meaningless work in the public sector
Research suggests that the experience of meaningless work is prevalent in various occupations, and that it is destructive for organizations and individuals, making this an issue of major ethical importance. In this paper, we present the results of a qualitative study based on interviews with Canadia...
| Autores principales: | ; ; |
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| Tipo de documento: | Electrónico Artículo |
| Lenguaje: | Inglés |
| Verificar disponibilidad: | HBZ Gateway |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Publicado: |
2024
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| En: |
Journal of business ethics
Año: 2024, Volumen: 195, Número: 3, Páginas: 563-578 |
| Otras palabras clave: | B
Meaningless work
B Public Sector B Meaningful Work B Aufsatz in Zeitschrift |
| Acceso en línea: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Sumario: | Research suggests that the experience of meaningless work is prevalent in various occupations, and that it is destructive for organizations and individuals, making this an issue of major ethical importance. In this paper, we present the results of a qualitative study based on interviews with Canadian public servants who self-identified as experiencing meaninglessness at work. Our main goal is to better understand participants' responses to the experience of meaningless work and the broader implications their experiences had on the rest of their lives. We surface and explore the harms inflicted on participants through their experiences with meaningless work and suggest that these harms may have been made worse by structural features of our study's public-sector setting. We contribute to organization studies literature by showing the intersection of meaningless work with three related concepts: bullshit jobs, empty labour, and functional stupidity and argue that our empirical findings complement and complicate these frameworks by presenting the complex but hidden emotional experiences that can accompany outwardly observable workplace behaviours. |
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| ISSN: | 1573-0697 |
| Obras secundarias: | Enthalten in: Journal of business ethics
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1007/s10551-024-05646-7 |
