This two-year inductive study of a refugee-resettlement agency examines how employees navigated a workload surge caused by a refugee crisis and sustained the perceived meaningfulness of their work during and after the surge. Employees shifted their conceptualization of meaningfulness from quality to quantity during the surge; post-surge, they again redefined meaningfulness, to encompass both quality and quantity. During these transitions, employees changed how they worked to resettle refugees via three subprocesses: negotiating emotional tension (“how I feel”), adopting a situational purpose (“what my work is for in this situation”), and adjusting their work practices (“what to do to achieve the situational purpose”). Though some refugees who arrived during the surge reported worse outcomes, those who had been told the rationale for employees’ quantity approach to work reported well-being and employment outcomes similar to those of refugees who had arrived during non-surge conditions. I offer a process model that elucidates how aid workers adapt their enactment of meaningful work in crisis conditions, highlighting finding a situational purpose—the provisional “why” or “for what” of their work in light of a new situation—while navigating a changing work environment.

What do talented employees carry with them as they move across organizations? How portable are their expertise, resources, and performance? As organizations’ needs for talent grow and individuals’ career trajectories become increasingly diverse, these questions become more important. In this chapter, we draw from career-mobility research and develop a framework that considers the human capital, social capital, and identity issues in talent movement. We also provide implications for organizations as talent enters and exits an organization. In sum, we suggest that intake of talent per se does not necessarily lead to successful acquisition and utilization of the talent’s capital. Conversely, departure of talent does not mean an absolute loss to organizations—losing talent can potentially bring organizations unexpected gains, such as new social resources.

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This research investigates the relationship between couples’ work-orientation incongruence—the degree to which romantic partners view the meaning of their own work differently—and their ability to succeed in making job transitions and experiencing satisfaction with the jobs they hold. We use a social information-processing approach to develop arguments that romantic partners serve as powerful social referents in the domain of work. By cueing social information regarding the salience and value of different aspects of work, partners with incongruent work orientations can complicate each other’s evaluation of their own jobs and the jobs they seek. In a longitudinal study of couples in which one partner is searching for work, we find that greater incongruence in couples’ calling orientations toward work relates to lower reemployment probability, a relationship that is mediated by an increased feeling of uncertainty about the future experienced by job seekers in such couples. Calling-orientation incongruence also relates to lower job satisfaction for employed partners over time. We contribute to the burgeoning literature on the role romantic partners play in shaping work outcomes by examining the effect of romantic partners’ perception of the meaning of work, offering empirical evidence of the ways in which romantic partners influence key work and organizational outcomes. Our research also contributes to the meaning of work literature by demonstrating how work-orientation incongruence at the dyadic level matters for individual work attitudes and success in making job transitions.

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