Decent and Meaningful Work: A Longitudinal Study

A fundamental proposition of the psychology of working theory is that for work to be meaningful, it must first be decent. The psychology of working theory also suggests that decent work leads to meaningful work partly by helping workers meet their needs for social connection. Therefore, the purpose of the current study was to contribute to both the meaningful work and psychology of working theory literatures by longitudinally examining the relation between decent and meaningful work and investigating 3 social connection mediators of this relation. We recruited a large online sample of working adults and surveyed them 4 times over a 9-month period. To test our hypotheses, we examined whether social contact, helping others, and community belonging explained the relation between decent and meaningful work at both the between-person and within-person levels. We found that overall levels of decent work were positively associated with overall levels of meaningful work and that positive changes in decent work were associated with positive changes in meaningful work. Moreover, we found that between-person community belonging and within-person helping others mediated the relation between decent work and meaningful work. These results have implications for identifying predictors of meaningful work and advancing the psychology of working theory by identifying specific social connection mediators of decent and meaningful work.