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The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of meaning of work as a linking mechanism between the perception of work context and turnover intention within the rarely studied context of social enterprises.

Drawing on meaning of work theories, an integrated research model was developed. Data were collected using questionnaires from 315 full-time employees at 114 social enterprises in Korea. Mediated and moderated structural equation models were used to assess the hypotheses.

Social mission was fully mediated by meaning of work to predict low turnover intention, and shared vision was partially mediated to predict the same. The authors also found that the positive relationship between social mission and meaning of work was stronger when shared vision was higher.

This study extends previous literature on managerial psychology (i.e. meaning of work and turnover) in the context of a new but increasingly prevalent organizational form, social enterprises. It also provides practical advice for managers seeking to retain employees and encourage the sustainability of the social enterprise sector.

Based on the conservation of resources (COR) theory, we investigate antecedents and consequences of work meaningfulness.

We used survey data from employees in various South Korean organizations and applied Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) and a bootstrapping procedure to test our proposed model.

We found that employees’ perceptions of their jobs’ social impact and task variety are positively related to work meaningfulness, which leads to higher levels of innovative behavior. We found that work meaningfulness mediates the effects of employees’ perceived social impact and task variety on their innovative behaviors.

Our study contributes to the positive psychology literature by identifying work meaningfulness as a critical underlying mechanism in explaining the relationship between task variety, perceived social impact, and innovative behavior.