Abstract
How are close personal relationships experienced by people in deeply meaningful work? Drawing upon in-depth interview data with 82 international aid workers, I offer three distinct contributions. First, I find that people who experience their work as deeply meaningful have high work devotion. I identify boundary inhibition as a mechanism to explain why they participate more willingly in overwork and erratic work, despite giving rise to time- and trust-based conflict in their relationships. Second, I find that people with high work devotion often also experience emotional distance in their personal relationships when their close others don’t value their work – a context I call occupational value heterophily. This disconnection-based conflict compounds the time- and trust-based conflict and engenders an emotionally agonizing situation, which I call work-relationship turmoil. Third, when close others do value their partner’s work – a context I call occupational value homophily – it fosters an emotional connection and offers an avenue for work-relationship enrichment. These findings draw upon deeply meaningful work to detail the multi-faceted work-relationship experience among those with high work devotion.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 558-588 |
| Number of pages | 31 |
| Journal | Journal of Management Studies |
| Volume | 56 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - May 2019 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:I am indebted to Katie Bailey for her editorial guidance and developmental support throughout the review process, and to the anonymous reviewers who consistently provided constructive comments and thoughtful encouragement. I am also grateful for valuable feedback from the following individuals and audiences on earlier drafts of the manuscript: Jillian Chown, Alyce Eaton, Theresa Glomb, Meghan Kallman, Erin Kelly, Colleen Manchester, David Pedulla, Aruna Ranganathan, Kurt Sandholtz, Kira Schabram, and Julie Wayne, as well as participants at the AUT conference on Meaningful Work in 2016, the May Meaning Meeting in 2017 and 2018, the ‘Dark Side of Meaningful Work’ symposium at the Academy of Management in 2017, and the Work-Family Researchers Network bi-annual meeting in 2018. I owe a debt of gratitude to Miranda Mammen for her tremendous editorial assistance. Finally, I wish to thank each of the participants in this study. All errors are, of course, my own.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd and Society for the Advancement of Management Studies
Keywords
- boundary inhibition
- deeply meaningful work
- occupational value homophily
- work devotion
- work-relationship conflict
- work-relationship turmoil