Jan Ch Karlsson, Professor of Working Life Science at Karlstad Business School, and his German colleague and collaboration partner have been given an award for their article “Towards a Sociology of Meaningful Work”.
– Work that includes a lot of negative stress or rigid hierarchies is actually lethal, says Jan Ch Karlsson.
Why is research about meaningful work so important?
– Most people spend a large portion of their lives and their waking hours working. Hence, it’s vital that the work performed is meaningful and feels meaningful, even if this is not the case for everyone.
Does your research indicate what characterises meaningful work?
– We’ve identified three crucial aspects. Independence, a sense of dignity, and recognition for the work being performed. There must also be reasonable work conditions that enable all these three aspects, so that the workers feel a sense of independence, dignity and recognition at work.
In what ways are people affected by perceiving their work as meaningful or not?
– Meaningless work, for example work that includes a lot of negative stress or rigid hierarchies is actually lethal. It often leads to cardiovascular diseases. Meaningful work, on the other hand, leads to workers that feel good and continue to develop.
Are there any general pointers for supervisors to create a sense of meaning at the workplace?
– The work must be independent and dignified, and the worker must be given recognition. That’s all there is to it.
Are there any indication regarding which professions have the workers with the most or least sense of meaning related to their work?
– We don’t yet know all that much about which professions offer meaningful work, but we’re planning to investigate this. We do, however, know a lot about how a job should not be, and that the amount of such jobs is currently increasing. These are undignified jobs without independence, where the workers are taken for granted and are not given any recognition.
How did you conduct the study for the article “Towards a Sociology of Meaningful Work”?
– The study is based on a comprehensive analysis of previous research on meaningful and meaningless work, as well as experiences gathered from investigations and various kinds of work that my co-author Knut Laaser from Stirling University and myself have conducted. It’s a broad study, comprising Norwegian factory workers, Swedish cabin crew, British bank employees, Indian security guards and German scholars.
