The Experience and Implications of Meaningless Work in the Public Sector

Christopher Belanger (), Samia Chreim () and Silvia Bonaccio ()
Additional contact information
Christopher Belanger: University of Ottawa
Samia Chreim: University of Ottawa
Silvia Bonaccio: University of Ottawa

Journal of Business Ethics, 2024, vol. 195, issue 3, No 6, 563-578

Abstract: Abstract Research suggests that the experience of meaningless work is prevalent in various occupations, and that it is destructive for organizations and individuals, making this an issue of major ethical importance. In this paper, we present the results of a qualitative study based on interviews with Canadian public servants who self-identified as experiencing meaninglessness at work. Our main goal is to better understand participants' responses to the experience of meaningless work and the broader implications their experiences had on the rest of their lives. We surface and explore the harms inflicted on participants through their experiences with meaningless work and suggest that these harms may have been made worse by structural features of our study's public-sector setting. We contribute to organization studies literature by showing the intersection of meaningless work with three related concepts: bullshit jobs, empty labour, and functional stupidity and argue that our empirical findings complement and complicate these frameworks by presenting the complex but hidden emotional experiences that can accompany outwardly observable workplace behaviours.

Keywords: Meaningful work; Meaningless work; Public sector (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10551-024-05646-7 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:195:y:2024:i:3:d:10.1007_s10551-024-05646-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10551/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10551-024-05646-7

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Ethics is currently edited by Michelle Greenwood and R. Edward Freeman

More articles in Journal of Business Ethics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().