What Makes Work Meaningful and Why Economists Should Care About it

Abstract

We demonstrate why meaningful work, i.e. job-related activities that individuals view as purposeful and worthwhile, matters to labour economists. Building on self-determination theory, which specifies the roles of autonomy, competence, and relatedness as preconditions for motivation, we are the first to explore the determinants of work meaningfulness. Specifically, using three waves of the European Working Conditions Survey, we show that autonomy, competence, and relatedness explain about 60% of the variation in work meaningfulness perceptions. Meanwhile, extrinsic factors, such as income, benefits, and performance pay, are relatively unimportant. Meaningful work also predicts absenteeism, skills training, and retirement intentions, which highlights the concept's economic significance. We provide new insights that could help organise the future of work in a meaningful and dignifying way and propose concrete avenues for future research on meaningful work in economics.

Policy insights from the new science of well-being

“…In contrast, having autonomy in the workplace and doing meaningful work both engender longer lasting satisfaction with life and higher worker productivity. 1 Making a similar error on a larger scale, nations around the world have historically measured their economic and social progress using objective indicators-such as gross domestic product, unemployment rates, and mortality rates-and have focused their policies on improving those outcomes. Yet, by focusing primarily on standard metrics, they miss an important aspect of success: whether people end up more satisfied with their lives because of those policies.…”