Culture and Organization

Meaningful Work: Contributions from the Social Scientific Study of Religion

This special issue aims to foster an interdisciplinary dialogue between the social scientific study of religion and the field of meaningful work. It invites scholars to integrate theoretical insights and debates from religious studies to deepen their understanding of meaningful work, while also encouraging the application of concepts from meaningful work literature to inform discussions in religious studies. By exploring how these two fields can be bridged and mutually enriched, this issue seeks to enhance both disciplines through comparative analyses and innovative theoretical applications.

Recent work in Culture and Organization and broader organizational studies has increasingly recognized the significance of meaningfulness in the workplace (Haugan and Klemsdal, 2024; Knights and Clarke, 2018). This growing focus has prompted organizational scholars to engage more deeply with the existential dimensions of people’s lives (Bailey et al., 2019). Over the past few decades, the field of meaningful work has emerged, with scholars investigating how individuals align their professions with a broader sense of life purpose (Martela and Pessi, 2018), how employees experience meaningfulness, spirituality, or religion in their daily work (Shigihara, 2019), and how the boundaries between personal and professional life are constructed, blurred, and navigated (Lips-Wiersma and Morris, 2009; Bailey et al., 2019; Klemsdal and Clegg, 2022).

The field of meaningful work encompasses a variety of approaches. Some scholars examine its social dimensions (Laaser and Karlsson, 2022), while others focus on organizational dynamics (Pratt and Ashforth, 2003). Additionally, a growing body of research explores how individuals conceptualize and balance meaningfulness in their work (Lips-Wiersma and Morris, 2017). This interdisciplinary field draws from sociology, organizational psychology, philosophy, ethics, political studies, and economics (Yeoman et al., 2019).

As scholars trained in the social scientific study of religion, we have been surprised to find that this area has yet to engage significantly with insights from our discipline. This gap, perhaps the result of the area’s relatively recent emergence, is notable, as both fields are concerned with secular and religious forms of meaning and meaning-making. Religious studies offers various approaches to understanding how religion and other worldviews are lived (e.g., Ammerman, 2016, 2007; Knibbe and Kupari, 2020), materialized (Meyer et al., 2010; Houtman and Meyer, 2012), experienced (Yamane, 2000; Meyer, 2006), and embodied (McGuire, 1990). Social scientific studies of religion explore meaning and meaning-making across various domains, including individuals’ relationships with their physical environments (Soar and Tremlett, 2017), behaviors (Fry, 2023), group dynamics (Ecklund and Johnson, 2021), and the broader social impacts of these phenomena (Jagger, 2021). Finally, some studies examine professional vocation (Fry, 2024), while others focus on the employment structures of faith-based organizations (Page, 2014). Hence, the intention to foster dialogue between the two subdisciplines is both overdue and promising.

In turn, this special issue will also explore how meaningful work’s focused examination of work might offer new and innovative insights for the social scientific study of religion. While the intersections of work and religion have long been explored historically (e.g., Weber, 1930), we believe that meaningful work’s detailed mapping of what people experience as meaningful in work (Lips-Wiersma and Morris, 2017) can prompt scholars of religion to reconsider existing frameworks and delve deeper into the specifics of everyday religious experience in the present. Moreover, meaningful work’s analytical differentiation of the meaning in work (individual), at work (organizational), and of work (societal) (Yeoman et al., 2019; Pratt and Ashforth, 2003), as well as their interdependence (Florian et al., 2019), raises questions about how these different levels of meaning can be translated and might be relevant to religious contexts and experiences.

This special issue therefore seeks to ignite an interdisciplinary collaboration between the fields of meaningful work and the social scientific study of religion. It will explore how individuals interpret meaningfulness in both life and work, considering how these interpretations resonate with their worldviews—whether religious, spiritual, or secular. Through this exploration, we aim to investigate how insights from religious studies can enrich the field of meaningful work and vice versa, offering initial suggestions and examples of how scholars from both disciplines can benefit from this collaborative approach. Additionally, this special issue may shed light on how specific blind spots have developed in both fields and explore potential solutions to address them.

We approach the field of religious studies in a broad sense, encompassing, amongst other phenomena, spirituality, secularity, implicit religion, and non-religion.

We welcome contributions from a range of theoretical and social scientific perspectives, including but not limited to:

·       How do individuals connect their sense of life purpose to their professional roles, and what role do worldviews—religious, spiritual, or otherwise—play in this connection?

·       How do employees’ experiences of meaningfulness at work intersect with their spiritual or religious practices, and how do these experiences shape their overall sense of purpose?

·       In what ways are boundaries between personal and professional life challenged and negotiated when individuals draw on religious or spiritual beliefs in the workplace?

·       How can insights from the social scientific study of religion help us better understand the processes through which employees construct and navigate meaningful work?

·       How do social dimensions of meaningful work, such as community or relationships, resonate with religious practices and beliefs across different organizational contexts?

·       How can organizational-level dynamics, such as leadership or culture, foster or inhibit expressions of spirituality or religious belief in the pursuit of meaningful work?

·       How does the concept of materiality in religious studies (e.g., sacred objects, spaces) inform our understanding of how people experience meaningfulness through material aspects of work environments?

References:

Ammerman, Nancy T. 2007. “Everyday Religion: Observing Modern Religious Lives.” Everyday Religion: Observing Modern Religious Lives, January, 1–272. https://doi.org/10.1093/ACPROF:OSO/9780195305418.001.0001.

———. 2016. “Lived Religion as an Emerging Field: An Assessment of Its Contours and Frontiers.” Nordic Journal of Religion and Society. Tapir Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.18261/issn.1890-7008-2016-02-01.

Bailey, Catherine, Ruth Yeoman, Adrian Madden, Marc Thompson, and Gary Kerridge. 2019. “A Review of the Empirical Literature on Meaningful Work : Progress and Research Agenda.” Human Resource Development Review 18 (1): 83–113. https://doi.org/10.1177/1534484318804653.

Ecklund, E. H., and David R. Johnson. 2022. Varieties of Atheism in Science. Oxford University Press.

Florian, Mona, Jana Costas, and Dan Kärreman. 2019. “Struggling with Meaningfulness When Context Shifts: Volunteer Work in a German Refugee Shelter.” Journal of Management Studies 56 (3): 589–616. https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12410.

Fry, Alex D. J. 2023. Gender Inequality in the Ordained Ministry of the Church of England: Examnining Conservative Male Clergy Responses to Women Priests and Bishops. London: Routledge.

——— 2024. "Science as Telos in the Pursuit of Beruf: How and Why the Church of England Agreed to Lock Down at the Start of the COVID-19 Pandemic." In Creemers, J., & Tatiana Kopaleishvili (eds.) Religious Freedom and COVID-19: A European Perspective.

Haugan, Heidi Amalie, and Lars Klemsdal. 2024. “Meaningful Work in a Grocery Store: A Phenomenological Sensemaking Approach to Job Crafting among Store Workers.” Culture and Organization 0 (0): 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/14759551.2024.2418329.

Houtman, Dick, and Birgit Meyer, eds. 2012. Things: Religion and the Question of Materiality. New York: Fordham University Press.

Jagger, S. 2021. "Mutual Flourishing? Women Priests and Symbolic Violence in the Church fof England." Religion & Gender 11: 192-217.

Klemsdal, Lars, and Stewart Clegg. 2022. “Defining the Work Situation in Organization Theory: Bringing Goffman Back In.” Culture and Organization 28 (6): 471–84. https://doi.org/10.1080/14759551.2022.2090563.

Knibbe, Kim, and Helena Kupari. 2020. Theorizing Lived Religion: Introduction. Journal of Contemporary Religion. Vol. 35. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.1080/13537903.2020.1759897.

Knights, David, and Caroline Clarke. 2018. “Living on the Edge? Professional Anxieties at Work in Academia and Veterinary Practice.” Culture and Organization 24 (2): 134–53. https://doi.org/10.1080/14759551.2017.1386190.

Laaser, Knut, and Jan Ch Karlsson. 2022. “Towards a Sociology of Meaningful Work.” Work, Employment and Society 36 (5): 798–815. https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170211055998.

Lips-wiersma, Marjolein, and Lani Morris. 2009. “Discriminating between ‘meaningful Work’ and the ‘Management of Meaning.’” Journal of Business Ethics 88 (3): 491–511. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-009-0118-9.

Lips-Wiersma, Marjolein, and Lani Morris. 2017. The Map of Meaning: A Guide to Sustaining Our Humanity in the World of Work. Routledge.

Martela, Frank, and Anne B. Pessi. 2018. “Significant Work Is about Self-Realization and Broader Purpose: Defining the Key Dimensions of Meaningful Work.” Frontiers in Psychology 9 (MAR). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00363.

McGuire, Meredith B. 1990. “Religion and the Body: Rematerializing the Human Body in the Social Sciences of Religion.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 29 (3): 283. https://doi.org/10.2307/1386459.

Meyer, Birgit. 2006. “Religious Sensations. Why Media, Aesthetics and Power Matter in the Study of Contemporary Religion.” Inaugural Lecture, VU University, Amsterdam, 6.

Meyer, Birgit, David Morgan, Crispin Paine, and S. Brent Plate. 2010. “The Origin and Mission of Material Religion.” Religion 40 (3): 207–11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.religion.2010.01.010.

Page, Sarah-Jane. 2014. "The Scrutinized Priest: Women in the Church of England Negotiating Professional and Sacred Clothing Regimes." Gender, Work & Organization, 21(4): 295-307.

Pratt, Michael G, and Blake E. Ashforth. 2003. “Fostering Meaningfulness in Working and at Work. Positive Organizational Scholarship: Foundations of a New Discipline. K. S. Cameron, JE Dutton and RE Quinn,” no. October 2019.

Shigihara, Amanda Michiko. 2019. “Amanda Michiko Shigihara California State University, Sacramento, U.S.A. ‘I Mean, Define Meaningful!’: Accounts of Meaningfulness among Restaurant Employees.” Qualitative Sociology Review XV (1): 106–32.

Soar, Katy, and Paul-Francious Tremlett. 2017. "Protest Objects: Bricolage, Performance and Counter-Archaeology." World Archaeology, 49(4): 423–434.

Weber, Max. (1930). The protestant ethic. New York: Scribner.

Yamane, David. 2000. “Narrative and Religious Experience.” Sociology of Religion 61 (2): 171–89.

Yeoman, Ruth, Catherine Bailey, Adrian Madden, and Marc Thompson. 2019. The Oxford Handbook of Meaningful Work. The Oxford Handbook of Meaningful Work. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198788232.001.0001.