Psychologické souvislosti pracovní smysluplnosti

• Authors: Paulík Karel , Novotný Jan Sebastian , Bláha Jiří , Horváthová Petra , Mikušová Marie

Title variants

EN

Psychological context of work meaningfulness

• Languages of publication: CS

Abstracts

EN

There is a significant shift of approach to the management of organizations and workers in recent decades. This shift in management philosophy is characterized by converting from traditional, conventional (rather bureaucratic) management models to rather humanistic/existential oriented models. This transition comes partly from the understanding that human resources are the most promising and effective way for organization development, partly from a shift in the understanding of the role of organizations in society. The key point of these approaches has become a "meaning" or "meaningfulness" in relation to the work and organization. The importance of work meaningfulness is not only in its potential to increase the competitiveness of organizations, but especially in its major (mostly positive) impacts on the employee himself and his work (and by that the organization and its performance). Work meaningfulness is strongly connected to the work engagement, which represents the active personal participation in the work process, manifested by vigor, active cooperation, willingness to contribute to the company's success and dedication to work. Work engagement seems to be next important factor affecting work attitudes and achievements of employees. The paper gives an overview of various approaches to work meaningfulness and work engagement, on the basis of which authors propose new model of work meaningfulness with overlap to work engagement. The work meaningfulness is not seen as one-dimensional variable, but consists of complex of interacting factors and processes that define an individual perceived meaning and importance of the work. Meaningful work is influenced by three areas. The first is the organizational culture. This is defined as a specific pattern of values, norms, beliefs, attitudes and assumptions that are often not clearly expressed, but affect the way individuals behave in an organization and how things are done. The second area is the work design (and broadly the design of organization). It contains several variables, such as workload, work extent (e.g. number of various activities), the depth of work (the amount of the reasoning behind the necessary processes and results of work), relationships with others, work flexibility, job sharing etc. The last area represents the individual/employee himself, e.g. his personality, intelligence (including emotional), optimism, sense of mastery, self-efficacy, attitudes etc.

Keywords

EN

work; meaningfulness; engagement; model

Discipline

• PSYCHOLOGY: PSYCHOLOGY

• Publisher: University of Ostrava, Faculty of Arts, Czech Republic
• Journal: Psychologie a její kontexty
• Year: 2014
• Volume: 5
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 3-15

Contributors

author

Paulík Karel

• Katedra psychologie, Filozofická fakulta, Ostravská univerzita, Reální 5, 701 03 Ostrava , Czech Republic

author

Novotný Jan Sebastian

author

Bláha Jiří

author

Horváthová Petra

author

Mikušová Marie