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To date, the vast majority of existing research on unethical leadership has focused on top leaders’ actions and behaviors as the primary catalyst for the permeation of unethical behaviors in organizations. In this chapter, we shift the focus to middle and junior managers and argue that they too have an active role in contributing to the permeation of top-level unethical leadership. More specifically, we adopt a meaning-making lens to investigate how junior and middle-level managers perceive and interpret top-level unethical leadership and how such meaning-making affects their (un)ethical legitimacy. Understanding the role played by lower-level managers becomes vitally important to develop a more holistic picture of the permeation of unethical leadership. Findings from 30 in-depth interviews with top, middle, and junior managers reveal variables such as survival, group membership, and strain as buttressing meaning-making by lower-level managers. Findings also revealed two contrasting aspects, that is, “interactions” within organizational members as well as “silence” by top-level managers playing into individuals’ information processing and attribution capacities during ethical dilemmas. Real cases experienced by participants pertaining to the flow of unethical leadership illustrate how the central bearings play out in managerial practice.

The purpose of this paper is first, to test the validity of a new scale measuring the construct of meaning‐making, defined as the ability to integrate challenging or ambiguous situations into a framework of personal meaning using conscious, value‐based reflection. Second, to explore whether meaning‐making is distinct from other personal resources (self‐efficacy, optimism, mastery, meaning in life), and coping (positive reinterpretation, acceptance). Third, to explore whether meaning‐making facilitates work engagement, willingness to change, and performance during organizational change.

Cross‐sectional survey‐data were collected from 238 employees in a variety of both public and private organizations.

Confirmatory factor analyses showed that meaning‐making can be distinguished from other personal resources, coping and meaning in life. Regression analyses showed that meaning‐making is positively related to in‐role performance and willingness to change, but not to work engagement, thereby partly supporting the hypotheses.

The paper focuses on meaning‐making that has not yet been studied empirically in organizational change settings. It shows that the new construct of psychological meaning‐making is related to valuable employee outcomes including in‐role performance and willingness to change. Meaning‐making explains variance over and above other personal resources such as self‐efficacy, optimism, mastery, coping and meaning in life.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of suffering for meaning making and spirituality in organizational contexts.

The paper explores how organizational spaces may be created for meaning making and how this is linked to the idea of compassion.

The paper suggests that while suffering has been explored in organizations, it has not been studied relative to existential meaning making. This is identified as a significant gap in research on organizational spirituality. The paper attempts to fill this gap and suggests that the study of suffering has to separate suffering as an objective phenomenon, which should be eliminated in organizations, from suffering as a subjective experience in which meaning may be found. It is also proposed that, for existential meaning to be uncovered in the face of suffering, organizational spaces have to be created in which such meaning making can take place.

The paper suggests that suffering can be a pathway to the discovery of spiritual meaning.

By drawing on the need to belong theory, the paper aims to propose a moderated mediation model to examine the role of workplace belongingness and meaning-making in the positive relationship between inclusive leadership and employee change participation.

Participants were 155 employees from 31 teams from a branch of a multinational pharmaceutical company located in an EU country. The company faces constant legal, regulatory and technology-related changes after the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic outbreak. Data were collected in three waves, approximately three weeks apart between March 2020 and May 2020. To test the mediating effect of workplace belongingness were performed first – a series of regression analyses – and second, bootstrapping to assess the statistical significance of the indirect effect (Preacher and Hayes, 2008).

Workplace belongingness mediates the relationship between inclusive leadership and employees change participation. Further, the research findings provide support that meaning-making moderates the relationship between workplace belongingness and change participation as well as the indirect relationship between inclusive leadership and change participation through workplace belongingness such that the positive relationships are stronger when meaning-making is higher.

The results indicate that should leaders and change management practitioners manage to influence positively employees' workplace belongingness by employing inclusive practices and procedures; leaders and change management practitioners will increase the level of participation during change and further the results note from an applied perspective the importance of mean-making as a facilitating factor during change in organizational settings. Relevant suggestions are made.

The findings provide new insights into how inclusive leadership and workplace belongingness can affect employees' change participation. Further, the research findings note the significant moderating role of meaning-making regarding both the relationship between workplace belongingness and change participation as well as the indirect relationship between inclusive leadership and change participation through workplace belongingness.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the racial and ethnic aspects of the doctoral socialization to provide a meaningful insight into the belief systems and decision-making processes related to academic success and degree completion. This paper addresses a gap in literature focusing on the racial and ethnic aspects of the doctoral student experience as they relate to student agency.

This narrative research of four doctoral students uses a postmodern active interview method to foreground the role of a doctoral agency as manifested in the ways students make meaning of their experiences as members of the science, technology, engineering, agriculture and math academic community. A dialectical approach to the traditional socialization models provides the framework for understanding the meaning-making processes within a critical context of academia.

Findings present the intrinsic foundations for a doctoral agency and forces that shape key decision-making processes for doctoral students.

Implications for research and practice provide guidance for faculty, graduate school administrators and organizations interested in supporting degree completion for historically marginalized doctoral students.

This study examines doctoral socialization as a meaning-making process of racial/ethnic students in engineering and agricultural programs. Narrative research design provides depth into the individual experiences and the role of racial/ethnic histories in students’ socialization (meaning-making) processes in a predominantly White academic environment.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the process and impact of patient involvement in locally defined improvement projects in two hospital clinics. The paper particularly aims to examine how patient narratives, in the form of diaries and radio montage, help to create new insights into patient experience for healthcare professionals, and support professionals’ enrolment and mobilisation in innovation projects.

Two case studies were undertaken. These drew upon qualitative interviews with staff and participant observation during innovation workshops. Patient diaries and a recorded montage of patient voices were also collected.

The findings illuminate translation processes in healthcare innovation and the emergence of meaning making process for staff through the active use of patient narratives. The paper highlights the critical role of meaning making as an enabler of patient-centred change processes in healthcare via: local clinic mangers defining problems and ideas; collecting and sharing patient narratives in innovation workshops; and healthcare professionals’ interpretation of patient narratives supporting new insights into patient experience.

This study demonstrates how healthcare professionals’ meaning making can be supported by articulating, constructing, listening and interpreting patient narratives. The two cases demonstrate how patient narratives serve as reflective devices for healthcare professionals.

This study presents a novel demonstration of the importance of patient narratives for translating healthcare innovation in a clinical practice setting.

In this child–parent research study, three adolescents theorize their meaning-making experiences while engaged in exclusive online learning during a three-month stay-at-home mandate. The purpose of this study is to highlight youth-created understandings about their literacy practices during COVID-19 in order to expand possibilities for youth-generated theory.

This child–parent research builds upon a critical dialectical pluralist (CDP) methodology, which is a participatory research method that looks to privilege the child as a co-researcher at every stage of the inquiry. In this research study, the adolescents work together to explore what it means to create and learn alone and then with others via virtual platforms. Research team discussions initially were scaffolded by the parent–researchers, and the adolescents developed their analyses individually and together, and their words and insights situate the findings and conclusions.

The musical form of a motet provides a metaphor that three adolescents used to theorize their meaning-making experiences during the stay-at-home order. The adolescents determined that time, frustration, and space were overarching themes that captured the essence of working alone, and then together, in messy, orchestrated online ensembles.

In this youth-centric research paper, three adolescents create understandings of their meaning-making experiences during the stay-at-home order and work together to determine personal and pedagogical implications.