Ethics and the Future of Meaningful Work: Introduction to the Special Issue.

The world of work over the past 3 years has been characterized by a great reset due to the COVID-19 pandemic, giving an even more central role to scholarly discussions of ethics and the future of work. Such discussions have the potential to inform whether, when, and which work is viewed and experienced as meaningful. Yet, thus far, debates concerning ethics, meaningful work, and the future of work have largely pursued separate trajectories.

Calling for a meaningful contribution? Bridging contributing to society with motivation theory.

This paper examines the concept of "contributing to society" in the context of meaningful work and calling. While previous studies have identified it as a significant dimension within these concepts, little attention has been paid to trying to conceptualize it. Also, with "self-oriented" fulfillment being an important aspect of the experience of meaningfulness, the understanding of contribution to society might be more complex than being simply an "other-oriented" concept.

Employee reactions to CSR in the pursuit of meaningful work: A case study of the healthcare industry.

With the growing interest in the microfoundations of corporate social responsibility ('micro-CSR'), many questions linger regarding how the workforce reacts to CSR, which has consequences for their meaningful work experiences. To address this lack of understanding, we conducted an inductive, comparative case study of two healthcare organisations to examine how employees experience meaningful work through reacting to their organisation's CSR initiatives. We demonstrate how CSR triggers employees' meaning-making of work, which takes the form of a misalignment perceived between CSR at the strategic-level and CSR as it is implemented at the employee-level, limiting the experiences of meaningful work.

Employer Attractiveness From an Employee Perspective: A Systematic Literature Review.

With the growing interest in employer attractiveness, research is unsystematic on how this phenomenon can be conceptualized and studied. Studies tend to make little conceptual differentiation regarding for whom employers should be attractive, and therefore, address the perspectives of potential as well as current employees, who work in organizations for long periods of time. In this study our arguments relate to the phenomenon's conceptual clarity as well as its differentiation from other related concepts.

Optimizing Employee Creativity in the Digital Era: Uncovering the Interactional Effects of Abilities, Motivations, and Opportunities.

An increasing digitalization in all aspects of life and work reshapes traditional assumptions about human creativity. Both scholars and practitioners raise many questions with regards to how to stimulate employee creativity in the digital work context. While there are many studies that examine predictors of employee creativity, little effort has been made thus far to synthesize these findings in way that would provide meaningful guidance to organizations and to provide bases for future research.

Get Noticed to Get Ahead: The Impact of Personal Branding on Career Success.

There is a growing amount of attention being brought to personal branding as an effective career behavior, but little is known about the factors that predict personal branding behaviors and their outcomes. In two studies ( = 477) across two distinctly different cultural contexts (Western and Asian) based on a newly developed and validated scale of personal branding, we have examined the antecedents and outcomes of personal branding. The findings confirm that personal branding leads to greater career satisfaction, fully mediated by perceived employability.

Personal Branding: Interdisciplinary Systematic Review and Research Agenda.

Personal branding has become an important concept in management literature in recent years. Yet, with more than 100 scholarly papers published on the concept to date, it has developed into a fragmented area of research with a diversity of definitions and conceptual boundaries. This paper posits that this heterogeneity of extant research impedes theoretical and empirical advancement.

Servant Leadership and Innovative Work Behavior in Chinese High-Tech Firms: A Moderated Mediation Model of Meaningful Work and Job Autonomy.

Scholars acknowledge the critical role of employee innovative work behavior (IWB) in facilitating organizational innovation in high-tech industries. However, the current knowledge is far from complete to paint a clear picture of how to evoke employee IWB in the Chinese high-tech industry. Many Chinese high-tech firms face a challenge moving from hierarchy-based leadership toward more employee-centered leadership styles, as the styles have different effects on employees' IWB.