When do Employees Experience their Work as Meaningful? Findings from a Study of Professional Service Work

This contribution relates to the current discussion on experiences of meaningfulness in professional service work and focuses on the widely neglected question of subjective experiences of meaning at work and its constraints. The main topic is subjective experiences of meaning at work, which are identified on the basis of interviews with physicians and social workers. The paper shows that experiences of meaningfulness result from the experience of congruence, that is, a perceived accordance of benefits for the self and for others. Furthermore, new threats to the experience of meaning can be identified which result from the loss of positive experiences at work as well as the reflexivization of questions of meaning.