Causing harm but doing good: Recognizing and overcoming the burden of necessary evil enactment in healthcare service professions

Andiappan, Meena

doi:10.1177/09514848221109833

Cited by 1 publication

(4 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…In terminology, all such tasks have 'conflicted' or simultaneously antisocial (i.e., harmful) and prosocial (i.e., beneficial) impacts. Regardless of the potential for benefit to arise from the harm, performing these tasks is complex and imposes substantially different demands on workers than ones that are neutral or exclusively prosocial (Andiappan, 2023;Whiteside and Barclay, 2018). Thornton-Lugo and Rupp (2021) found that the negative emotional and cognitive implications of performing harmful tasks are not mitigated simply because they are required or done in the service of organizational goals.…”

Section: Harm-doing and Meaningfulness Of Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Previous research on organizationally mandated harm-doing has focused on the negative experiences of targets and actions that can be taken to lessen these outcomes, such as performing the tasks in an interactionally just or interpersonally sensitive manner (Hillebrandt et al, 2022;Margolis and Molinsky, 2008;Thornton-Lugo and Rupp, 2021). Performers' experiences have been either overlooked or considered only insofar as they limit or support actions that benefit targets (Andiappan, 2023;. Even actions taken to repair harm, although beneficial for targets, may worsen the situation for performers.…”

Section: Harm-doing and Meaningfulness Of Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…By introducing the concept of harm worthiness, we offer new insights into the experiences of the many individuals who are required to inflict harm on others during their work (Molinsky and Margolis, 2005). It builds on prior research that has mainly focused on the targets of harm and addresses the need to better understand the comparatively neglected experiences of harm-doers (Andiappan, 2023;Thornton-Lugo and Rupp, 2021).…”

Section: Theoretical Contributionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although research on workplace harm-doing has yet to consider the process through which these tasks influence meaningfulness (Andiappan, 2023), studies of proximal outcomes such as job satisfaction imply that an occupational requirement to cause harm is likely to, but will not necessarily, undermine work meaningfulness. Specifically, some evidence indicates that an 'impact calculus' may come into play, in which the effects of benefiting others can offset the negative effects of harming them Holt et al, 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Harm, Then Good? How Work Meaningfulness Emerges from Doing Harm

Robertson

Hannah

Lautsch

2023

J Management Studies

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Meaningful work has been identified as an important antecedent of an array of positive outcomes for both workers and their employers. However, many work roles involve harming others, an experience that has previously been linked to negative outcomes such as dissatisfaction and burnout. How does meaningfulness emerge when one's work includes such challenging circumstances? Drawing on interviews and observations in the veterinary industry, we elucidate new theory about the relationship between harm‐doing and the experience of meaningful work. Workers' interpretations of the worthiness of the harm, as well as the types of actions they take to remediate it, influence whether their involvement in harm‐doing episodes undermines or heightens their sense of meaningfulness. We further detail how dimensions of harm‐doing episodes shape opportunities for remediation, as well as whether the episodes ‘stick’ in workers' memories and hence figure into their ongoing, holistic accounts of work meaningfulness. Based on these findings, we introduce a novel ‘work‐bounded, worker‐centric’ view of meaningfulness that incorporates both the nature of work and workers' interpretations of it. Our research has implications for the work meaningfulness and workplace harm literatures, as well as for the many individuals whose work involves doing harm.

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Section: Harm-doing and Meaningfulness Of Workmentioning

confidence: 99%