Culture and Organization

Lost in Meaninglessness: Exploring How, When, and Why Work Becomes Meaningless and Finding Ways Forward

Understandings of work and the workplace, and the ways how meaningfulness at work is experienced have been changing profoundly, and particularly since the Covid pandemic which disrupted such understandings. Research on what makes work meaningful has burgeoned the last years, and concepts such as meaningful and decent work have been globally promoted by the United Nations and the ILO (also see Handbooks and recent reviews: Allan et al., 2019; Laaser and Bolton, 2022; Yeoman et al., 2022). All these publications and initiatives seem to suggest that work can be inherently meaningful, and that people across the globe are able to experience their work as such. Notwithstanding the critiques on meaningfulness, such as its paradoxical nature (e.g., its subjective experience vis-à-vis a noumenal world), the inherent assumption remains rooted in the belief in the existence of meaning, and the possibility for individuals to obtain a meaningful experience at work.

However, there is a conspicuous neglect for the conceptual opposite of meaningfulness, which denotes the meaninglessness of contemporary work. Yet, meaninglessness does not just indicate the conceptual opposite of meaning, and the absence of meaning does not automatically imply meaninglessness. Meaningless work constitutes a fundamentally different experience, including feelings of despair, hopelessness and anxiety that may result from a crisis of meaninglessness that people encounter in and at work (Alvesson and Stephens, 2024; Bal et al., 2023; Costas and Carremann, 2016; Graeber, 2018; Mitra and Buzzanell, 2017). Experiences of meaninglessness are also conceptually different from meaningfulness. For instance, while meaningfulness has usually been attributed as an individual experience of meaning at/in work, meaninglessness extends beyond such notion by denoting both individual and collective experiences (Bal et al., 2023).

The individualistic tendency within meaningfulness projects a perspective on the individual as being responsible for the meaning in one’s job, while experiences of meaninglessness are more likely to result from an externally imposed force that renders jobs and work meaningless. This has also been attributed to contemporary neoliberal capitalism (Bal et al., 2023; Graeber, 2018), which has the tendency to create meaningless jobs (marketeer, content manager) that seemingly produce economic but no real value. Moreover, while meaningfulness has often been theorized in relation to the fulfillment of needs, such as needs for competence or belonging, meaninglessness unfolds through different theoretical, and experiential dynamics. Meaninglessness is also associated with fundamentally different affects and emotions, including anxiety, fear, frustration and powerlessness (Bailey et al., 2019). When associated with such different emotions, it is also likely that experiences of meaninglessness will produce different outcomes and should be understood as operating differently than meaningfulness or its absence thereof.

For these reasons, we believe it is necessary to place equal emphasis on and attention to the topic of meaninglessness at work, its lived experience, and its consequences, while adopting critical perspectives in its treatment as an autonomous and independent concept from meaningfulness.

While research on various encounters with meaninglessness at work has been on the rise over the last years across a diverse range of Social Science disciplines, such emergence has been fragmented, traditionally discipline-focused, and predominantly uncritical, with few exceptions:

-       Studies on the proliferation of bullshit jobs (Graeber, 2018), which are jobs perceived by those who perform them as 'completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious to the extent that even the employee cannot justify their existence, despite feeling obligated to pretend otherwise as a condition of employment' (19). These jobs not only fail to contribute meaningfully to society but also often result in feelings of disillusionment, falseness, and disengagement among workers.

-     Research addressing the normalization of absurdity in the workplace (Bal et al., 2023; McCabe, 2020; Simon et al., 2024). When organizations are becoming absurd, processes and behaviors spiral into the nonsensical and the farcical, where people are struggling with sensemaking when confronted with meaninglessness. At the same time, work has elucidated how absurdities are ‘hypernormalized’ (Bal et al., 2023), and as such taken for granted, suppressed, denied and treated as merely part of the everyday life.

-       Research on organizations that operate based on a principle of functional stupidity (Alvesson and Stephens, 2024), whereby people seem to do exactly what is expected of them uncritically, following grandiose proclamations, visions, and meaningless policies and statements. This generates a progressive disconnect between those responsible for the organization's image and those responsible for safeguarding its primary task (Spicer, 2018, 40–41).

-  Research on topics such as work alienation (Zawadzki and Lennerfors, 2022), boredom (Driver, 2022), cynicism, or organizational disidentification (Kalkman, 2023). These studies highlight the growing disconnection between individuals and their workplaces, and explore the structural and symbolic roots of these phenomena, as well as the associated risks to individual and collective health. Moreover, alienation, boredom and disidentification may all result from experienced meaninglessness at/of work, and as such are inherently connected to the experience of loss of meaning. 

There are also emerging reflections on ways to overcome the perception of performing meaningless work. For example, the idea “to nurture a set of organizing practices based on the commitment to consume less and less junky management ideas” (Kärreman et al., 2021, 3) and to support forms of “slow and vulnerable management” (Satama et al., 2024). Other perspectives have recently investigated how to restore movements of collective resistance and voice (Ashcraft, 2017), disobedience (McCabe, 2020), and emancipation practices (Bristow et al., 2017) as antidotes to the spread of pointless working experiences.

The Current Special Issue

In this Special Issue, we argue that it is important to pay attention to and, where possible, synthesize the widespread and critical experiences of lack of meaning in work, in order to delve into their fundamental causes and possible strategies for addressing them.

This Special Issue therefore seeks to advance theoretical, practical, and methodological understanding of how, when, and why work is perceived as meaningless, embracing the diversity of disciplines, contexts, and lived experiences of work.

In line with the cultural and organizational perspective promoted by the journal, and unlike what is argued in many studies that focus on meaningfulness, we believe that the absence of meaning in work is not merely an individual and subjective matter. Instead, it is inevitably intertwined with the quality of relationships with others and, more broadly, with the historical, social, and political dimensions of contemporary organizational and work contexts. More critical perspectives are therefore needed to understand how meaninglessness is experienced by individual workers, but also collectively, and how systemic features produce such experiences.  Moreover, pathways out of meaninglessness need to be explored and critically discussed.

We therefore invite critically positioned submissions from scholars across disciplines including but not limited to Sociology, Psychology, Organizational Behavior, Economics, Anthropology, and Management studies. Potential topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

·      The Nature and Manifestations of meaninglessness at work:

o   Examination of the characteristics, typologies, and prevalence of lack of meaning in contemporary working society.

o   Organizational Dynamics and Structures: Analysis of organizational factors contributing to the creation and perpetuation of meaninglessness at work, including management practices, workplace processes, employment relations, corporate culture, and power dynamics.

o   Historical and Comparative Perspectives: Comparative studies examining the historical evolution of work and the emergence of meaninglessness across different workplaces, cultures and contexts.

o   Societal and Economic Ramifications: Investigation of the broader societal and economic explanations and implications of meaninglessness at work, including effects on dignity, well-being, productivity, inequality, belonging, engagement, and social cohesion.

·      Finding Meaning within Meaninglessness: How can meaning be found within meaninglessness? What are individual and collective coping strategies to regain a sense of meaning for both individuals and groups of people?

·      Resisting Meaninglessness: Individual and collective strategies for recognizing, challenging, transforming, and mitigating the proliferation of meaninglessness at different levels.

·      Policy Implications and Future Directions: Exploration of policy interventions, institutional reforms, and alternative models of work, working relations, and workplaces that address the phenomenon and promote meaningful and fulfilling forms of employment.

We encourage submissions that employ critical, in-depth work that can push the mainstream research boundaries in terms of methods and perspectives, with specific regard to qualitative approaches, theoretical analysis, case studies. Submissions should rigorously and robustly engage with relevant literature, provide critically novel insights, and contribute to advancing scholarly understanding of the meaninglessness of contemporary work. Creative and imaginative submissions are most welcome, and especially those that approach the topic of the Special Issue in an innovative way.

References

Allan, Blake A., Cassondra Batz-Barbarich, and Haley M. Sterling. 2019. "Outcomes of Meaningful Work: A Meta-Analysis." Journal of Management Studies 56(3): 500–528.

Alvesson, Mats, and Anne Stephens. 2024. "‘Is It Worth Doing This or Is It Better to Commit Suicide?’: On Ethical Clearance at a University." Human Relations 0(0).

Ashcraft, Karen L. 2017. "‘Submission’ to the Rule of Excellence: Ordinary Affect and Precarious Resistance in the Labor of Organization and Management Studies." Organization 24(1): 36–58.

Bailey, Catherine, Marjolein Lips-Wiersma, Adrian Madden, Ruth Yeoman, Marc Thompson, and Neal Chalofsky. 2019. "The Five Paradoxes of Meaningful Work: Introduction to the Special Issue ‘Meaningful Work: Prospects for the 21st Century’." Journal of Management Studies 56(3): 481–499.

Bal, Matthijs, Andrew Brookes, Cliff Hack-Polay, Mariusz Kordowicz, and John Mendy. 2023. The Absurd Workplace: How Absurdity Is Normalized in Contemporary Society and the Workplace. Amsterdam: Springer Nature.

Bristow, Alexandra, Susanne Robinson, and Olivier Ratle. 2017. "Being an Early-Career CMS Academic in the Context of Insecurity and ‘Excellence’: The Dialectics of Resistance and Compliance." Organization Studies 38(9): 1185–1207.

Costas, Jana, and Dan Kärreman. 2016. "The Bored Self in Knowledge Work." Human Relations 69(1): 61–83.

Michaela, Driver. (2022). “Workplace boredom as an empowering experience: a psychoanalytic reconceptualization of boredom and identity in organizations”. Culture and Organization 28(2): 115-128

Graeber, David. 2018. Bullshit Jobs: A Theory. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Jori Pascal Kalkman. (2023). “The lived experience of organizational disidentification: how soldiers feel betrayed, dissociate, and suffer”. Culture and Organization. 29(1): 1-18.

Kärreman, Dan, André Spicer, and Rune K. Hartmann. 2021. "Slow Management." Scandinavian Journal of Management 37(2).

Laaser, Knut, and Sharon Bolton. 2022. "Absolute Autonomy, Respectful Recognition and Derived Dignity: Towards a Typology of Meaningful Work." International Journal of Management Reviews 24(3): 373–393.

McCabe, Darren. 2020. Changing Change Management. London: Routledge.

Mitra, Rahul, and Patrice M. Buzzanell. 2017. "Communicative Tensions of Meaningful Work: The Case of Sustainability Practitioners." Human Relations 70(5): 594–616.

Suvi, Satama, Hannele Seeck and Lucia Garcia-Lorenzo. (2024). “Embracing relational vulnerabilities at the top: a study of managerial identity work amidst the insecurities of the self.” Culture and Organization 30(4): 442-461

Simon, Thomas, Marco Cina, and Xavier Philippe. 2024. "Mal du Siècle. From the Disenchanted Youth of the Romantic Age to the Disillusionment of Today’s Young Graduates." M@n@gement, 31–49.

Spicer, André. 2018. Business Bullshit. London: Routledge.

Yeoman, Ruth, Catherine Bailey, and Amanda Madden, eds. 2022. The Oxford Handbook of Meaningful Work. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Michał, Zawadzki and Thomas Taro Lennerfors. 2022. “Disalienation in the management classroom: lessons from Hermann Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game.” Culture and Organization 28(3-4): 216-226.