4 C’s and the perspectives of a paraglider – Facilitating narrative perspective-taking to support meaningful work
By Suvi-Jonna Martikainen
Experiencing work as meaningful is thought to be an essential human need sought by many and to have many positive consequences from better work-related health to an overall sense of life meaning. Lately, it has risen as a fundamentally important phenomenon at work, and still, there is a lot more to understand about employees’ authentic experiences of meaningful and meaningless work – that is how meaningful work is felt in moments. Along that understanding the implications of how to support meaningful work experiences and safeguard from meaningless moments at work would become more robust.
In a study focusing on peoples’ genuine experiences and how they talk about them, we found out that that overarching themes in peoples’ stories of meaningful and meaningless work were defined by 4 C’s: connection, contribution, and conversion in the meaningful moments. Confinement, especially in relation to agency and time usage, was the overarching theme in moments of meaningless work.
In addition, we studied the vocabulary, the quality of language, and the structural characteristics, especially coherence and/or complexity, of peoples’ narratives. From the vocabulary and language, we saw that meaningless moments were emotionally particularly complex. Structural analysis showed that momentary narratives of meaningfulness were infused with a special perspectivity as different and changeable viewpoints to the experience.
Firstly, perspectivity showed on the temporal characteristics of the narratives, meaning that the narratives presented multiple points in time and continuity between them, in other words they reflected the importance of a meaningful moment in the aspects of past, present, and future. Secondly, perspectivity was found on the thematic coherence in the narratives, meaning that they contained experiential growth themes describing cultivating personally meaningful activities and relationship, i. e. connection, contribution, and conversion, rather than those of status and appearances. Finally, stories also included causal coherence, as in showing consequences and explanations why something was experienced as meaningful. There were notably less different and changeable viewpoints in meaningless narratives, which in turn seemed to be stuck and static in narration.
Hence, two central metaphors describe perspectivity in peoples’ meaningful and meaningless experiences. Meaningful moments entail a perspective of a paraglider: a far-reaching view to a vast landscape with various views to the importance of the experience. Meaningless moments resemble the experience of a fly stuck in a glass jar: desperately wanting to get out but staying confined by a difficult emotional experience with a narrow and limited viewpoint of pointlessness.
Therefore, we concluded that narrative perspective-taking could render work-related meaningfulness by bringing focus to experiential growth themes of connection, contribution, and conversion, and prompting different and changeable viewpoints to observe the experiences. Next, we suggest a checklist as a tool for such narrative perspective-taking in relation to meaningful and meaningless moments at work. The checklist may be used as a stimulus for self-reflective perspectivity or a prompt for dialogues amongst working communities. Thus, it may also support social construction of meaningfulness at work.
Practical checklist for facilitating/enhancing narrative perspectivity-taking:
Article Details
Moments of Meaningfulness and Meaninglessness: A Qualitative Inquiry Into Affective Eudaimonia at Work
Suvi-Jonna Martikainen, Laura Kudrna, and Paul Dolan
First Published Online December 1, 2021
DOI: 10.1177/10596011211047324
Group & Organization Management
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