When work loses its meaning: Voice or exit? A longitudinal analysis with the 2013–2016 French Working Conditions surveys

Thomas Coutrot and Coralie Perez ()
Additional contact information
Thomas Coutrot: IRES - Institut de recherches économiques et sociales
Coralie Perez: CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) from HAL

Abstract: Although generating increasing debate in the media and in society, meaningful work has only recently become a legitimate research object in labour economics. The authors theoretically ground the concept of meaningful work by drawing on the theory of the psychodynamics of work. This leads to three dimensions of the meaning of work: social usefulness, ethical coherence and development capacity. Then, they propose an empirical measure of this concept using the French Working Conditions surveys. Exploiting the surveys' longitudinal nature (2013–2016), they assess how workers react to meaningless work (exit or voice). Using instrumental variable techniques to alleviate endogeneity biases that may affect estimations, they conclude that meaningless work favours job quits and, to a lesser degree, unionization.

Keywords: Unionization; Worker well-being; Social utility; Psychodynamics of work; Meaningful work; Labour market outcomes; Ethical conflicts (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-09
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Economic and Industrial Democracy, inPress, ⟨10.1177/0143831X251358583⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:hal:cesptp:halshs-05233476

DOI: 10.1177/0143831X251358583

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().