meaning-based job-related well-being: exploring a meaningful work conceptualization of job satisfaction

An alternative conceptualization for job satisfaction, the most commonly measured variable in organizational, vocational, and work psychology literatures, is explored in 3 differing samples totaling 811 working adults. eudaimonic, meaning-based job-related well-being (mjw) predicts job and life outcomes just as well as the more commonly measured hedonic, pleasure-based job satisfaction (js), and mjw relates to outcomes above and beyond js. mjw locates a new origin of job satisfaction in the person, in a life situation, in a community and social relations, rather than in the work organization. our findings demonstrate that mjw is distinct from but related to js and other job attitudes, and that facets of mjw exist that have been excluded from job satisfaction research, including satisfaction with the impacts of the job on family, life, and standard of living, how the job facilitates expression and development of the self, and sense of transcendent purpose through job role. these facets are important to individuals, the practice of management, organizational design, and society. mjw derives from the impact of jobs on workers’ larger worlds and on the fulfillment of their basic human needs from work. thus, the causes of job satisfaction broaden from enjoyment of work in isolation, to its contextualized meaning and impact in workers’ lives. this is the first study in many decades, of which we are aware, to broaden the conceptualization of the origins of work attitudes beyond the confines of the workplace.