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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.

The purpose of this research is to examine the relationship between coaching leadership and employees' taking charge while incorporating the mediating role of work meaningfulness and the moderating role of challenge-hindrance stressor.

A total of 355 pairs of effective samples were collected through a two-stage supervisor-subordinate paired survey. Four hypotheses were tested using hierarchal regression analysis and bootstrapping method.

The findings show that coaching leadership is positively related to taking charge, and work meaningfulness positively mediates the coaching leadership-taking charge relationship; high challenge stressors and high hindrance stressors weaken the positive effect of coaching leadership on work meaningfulness respectively; challenge stressors and hindrance stressors further moderate the indirect relationship of coaching leadership and taking charge through work meaningfulness.

This study provides a new perspective for organizations to activate employees' taking charge, thereby enriching the antecedents of taking charge. By incorporating challenge-hindrance stressor framework, this study also provides answers to when coaching leadership will be less effective.

Drawing on signaling theory and the “signal transmission–interpretation–feedback” framework, this study explores the effects of perceived distributive justice and respect from managers on nurses' work meaningfulness and work effort in public hospitals in China and examines the moderating role of work self-efficacy.

We collected 341 paired questionnaires for nurses and managers from four public hospitals in China. The data were analyzed by structural equation modeling and hierarchical regression analysis.

Distributive justice and managers' respect for employees are positively related to work meaningfulness. Additionally, work self-efficacy negatively moderates this relationship. Work meaningfulness is positively related to work effort and fully mediates the relationships between perceived distributive justice and respect from the manager and work effort.

This study provides useful insights for healthcare organizations to improve nurses' work meaningfulness from the perspectives of their material and emotional needs, according to their work self-efficacy characteristics, thus promoting their work effort. The findings offer important guidance for improving the effectiveness of grass-roots human resources to cope with unpredictable situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study focuses on the organization's environmental factors that affect the primary staff's work meaningfulness. Further, it analyzes the differences in signal interpretation among nurses with different work self-efficacy characteristics, thus providing new insights into work meaningfulness. Through manager–nurse pairing data, it reveals the important role of work meaningfulness in motivating work effort.

Based on the role theory, this study examines whether workplace age discrimination indirectly relates to older workers' bridge employment intentions through work meaningfulness.

Study 1 used two-wave time-lagged survey data from one hundred and seventy nurses (≥45 years old) from the Midwestern United States. Study 2 used three-wave time-lagged survey data from one hundred and eighty-six employees from a wide range of occupations in the United States. The online survey contains various self-reports on workplace age discrimination, work meaningfulness, affective commitment, and bridge employment intentions.

Results in Study 1 found that workplace age discrimination was negatively and indirectly related to older nurses' bridge employment intentions through their experiences of work meaningfulness. Results in Study 2 further confirmed the mediating role of work meaningfulness in the relationship between age discrimination and bridge employment intentions, above and beyond the role of affective commitment.

This study contributes to the research by testing the indirect relationship between workplace age discrimination and older workers' bridge employment intentions through work meaningfulness, further raising our awareness of the importance of social and interpersonal experiences in older workers' preretirement jobs to their late-career development.

The purpose of this paper is to increase understanding of the ways workers can actively make their own work experiences more meaningful.

The data consist of 29 interviews with people from three professions. The authors analyzed the interviews by coding the statements into first‐ and second‐order categories, and then aggregating them into theoretical constructs; and by recognizing relations between the constructs.

Workers try to increase the proportion of positive cues extracted from work to make their work more meaningful. The three main tactics for increasing the proportion of positive cues are cognitively emphasizing the positive qualities of work, developing competencies to be better able to produce positive outcomes and positive reactions from others, and influencing the work content.

This model provides a preliminary understanding of meaningfulness‐making, based on cross‐sectional interview data. Future research should use alternative methods, and verify and elaborate the findings.

Managers can promote workers’ sense of meaningfulness by coaching and enabling meaningfulness‐making tactics identified in this paper.

This paper presents alternative ways to achieve work meaningfulness that complement the previously recognized job crafting and sensemaking routes.

The importance and benefit of work meaningfulness has been recognized from many previous studies. The purpose of this study aimed at how employees in Taiwan sense their work as meaningful by introducing prosocial motivation along with two organizational-related factors – task significance and external prestige.

In total, 451 questionnaires were used to analyze the relationships among task significance, external prestige, prosocial motivation and work meaningfulness.

The results confirm the research hypotheses. This study advanced our understanding of how work meaningfulness arises through an integration of an individual’s psychological state with work contexts. The implications for managerial practices and future research are discussed.

This research represented an initial empirical test for measuring these constructs in Taiwanese society. While all the measurements have good reliabilities, it is only a good start. The examination of these constructs using these measurements needs additional research, preferably, in different cultural and industrial contexts.

This study aims to investigate how technology characteristics facilitate employees' work meaningfulness through job crafting.

This study applies the survey method and collects data from 357 Chinese participants with the experience of using information technology (IT) at work.

Technology characteristics (i.e. technology reconfigurability and technology customization) enable employees to craft their jobs, contributing to work meaningfulness.

It remains to be seen whether the findings can be generalized to other cultural contexts. This study justifies the positive effects of IT but does not take into consideration the IT factors that might thwart job crafting.

IT is not merely a work tool. It is a contextual component strongly conducive to cultivating work meaningfulness. However, IT itself cannot directly lead to work meaningfulness. Instead, its contribution to job crafting matters.

The literature on the downstream impact of IT has yet to consider the value of IT for job crafting and work meaningfulness. This study verifies that job crafting is the linking mechanism between IT and work meaningfulness.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between sense of calling and work meaningfulness with job crafting as a mediator and spiritual leadership as a moderator.

Adopting a three-wave procedure, data were collected from 333 participants across industries from Guangdong province, China.

Results indicate that job crafting partially mediates the relationship between employee sense of calling and work meaningfulness. Moreover, the positive relationship between job crafting and work meaningfulness is more significant when spiritual leadership is high than when it is low. Additionally, spiritual leadership moderates the indirect relationship of sense of calling and work meaningfulness through job crafting such that the indirect effect of sense of calling is stronger when spiritual leadership is high than when it is low.

Based on self-determination theory, this study adds to current literatures examining the importance of sense of calling on a person's career and explores the boundary conditions, which bring desirable outcomes.

Informed by the job characteristics model (JCM) and job crafting theory (JCT), this study aims to investigate the mediating role of meaningfulness at work in the relationship between a growth mindset and in-role performance and moderating role of job crafting in this indirect effect.

To this end, the authors examined the moderated mediation model with 271 corporate trainers enrolled in the largest online community for adult educators in South Korea.

Results showed that the relationship between a growth mindset and in-role performance is positively mediated by meaningfulness at work. Furthermore, job crafting acted as a moderator in this relationship, such that trainers with high levels of job crafting showed a greater in-role performance, while trainers with low levels of job crafting reported a negative indirect effect of a growth mindset.

The current study contributes to the JCM and JCT by suggesting a growth mindset as individual characteristics to promote meaningfulness at work and in-role performance. The study also responds to the calls to expand the mediation mechanisms and boundary conditions of a growth mindset in the workplace. The authors provide important insights into how corporate trainers’ job crafting is crucial in enhancing or impeding their performance and meaningful work.

Based on the affective events and self-concept theories, this study aims to examine the relationship between knowledge sharing system, job crafting, meaningfulness in work and employees' intention to stay with the organization.

In the present study, the authors conducted a time-lagged survey for analyzing the association between knowledge sharing system, job crafting, meaningfulness in work and employees' intention to stay with the organization. The study sample comprises 358 Generation Y employees working in Indian IT organizations. Results were analyzed using Process and Hayes macro process.

The study findings suggest significant relationships between knowledge sharing system, job crafting, meaningfulness in work and intention to stay among Gen Y employees. Moreover, the results demonstrated that knowledge sharing system, directly and indirectly, impacts employees' intention to stay via sequential mediation of job crafting and meaningfulness in work.

In today's era of hyper-competition and “war for talent,” retaining talented professionals has become the topmost priority for organizations. This becomes even more challenging with new generations, Gen Y and Z, entering the workforce driven by entirely different needs compared to earlier generations. Thus, the present study offers an integrated framework that organizational practitioners could utilize to enhance the retention of their young talented professionals.

Despite the emerging interest in the concept of knowledge sharing, few studies investigated the association between knowledge sharing system and intention to stay among Gen Y employees. Also, research still lacks in examining the underlying mechanism of how knowledge sharing system may enhance job crafting and meaningfulness in work, which could fuel Gen Y employees' intention to stay with the organization.