When a job is a calling: the meanings of money for meaningful work
Some people experience work as a calling, working for passion and to make a valuable contribution to the world. Other people experience work as a job, working for the remuneration and other material benefits that work provides. According to conventional wisdom, people cannot have both a calling and...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Conference item |
| Language: | English |
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Academy of Management
2023
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| _version_ | 1811140210262540288 |
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| author | Mortimer, S Klein, K |
| author_facet | Mortimer, S Klein, K |
| author_sort | Mortimer, S |
| collection | OXFORD |
| description | Some people experience work as a calling, working for passion and to make a valuable contribution to the world. Other people experience work as a job, working for the remuneration and other material benefits that work provides. According to conventional wisdom, people cannot have both a calling and a job orientation to their work—working for both the meaningfulness and the money. But despite its prevalence in the literature, this claim is supported by remarkably little empirical evidence. We conducted a three-year longitudinal qualitative study that challenged this assumption: the teachers we interviewed were highly motivated by both their pay and their passion to make a positive difference to the lives of their students. Yet they also experienced a tension between their prosocial and financial motivations, going to lengths to explain and justify their choices. We identified two processes through which they resolved this tension: the first, balancing, involves affirming a tension between prosocial and financial motivations in general, while explaining why it does not apply in this case. The second, integrating, involves rejecting a tension between prosocial and financial motivations by making financial reward part of what makes their work meaningful. |
| first_indexed | 2024-04-23T23:26:57Z |
| format | Conference item |
| id | oxford-uuid:18c3001e-34e4-44ed-a1e5-9c13bb8e088e |
| institution | University of Oxford |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-25T04:18:21Z |
| publishDate | 2023 |
| publisher | Academy of Management |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | oxford-uuid:18c3001e-34e4-44ed-a1e5-9c13bb8e088e2024-07-25T08:33:02ZWhen a job is a calling: the meanings of money for meaningful workConference itemhttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_5794uuid:18c3001e-34e4-44ed-a1e5-9c13bb8e088eEnglishSymplectic ElementsAcademy of Management2023Mortimer, SKlein, KSome people experience work as a calling, working for passion and to make a valuable contribution to the world. Other people experience work as a job, working for the remuneration and other material benefits that work provides. According to conventional wisdom, people cannot have both a calling and a job orientation to their work—working for both the meaningfulness and the money. But despite its prevalence in the literature, this claim is supported by remarkably little empirical evidence. We conducted a three-year longitudinal qualitative study that challenged this assumption: the teachers we interviewed were highly motivated by both their pay and their passion to make a positive difference to the lives of their students. Yet they also experienced a tension between their prosocial and financial motivations, going to lengths to explain and justify their choices. We identified two processes through which they resolved this tension: the first, balancing, involves affirming a tension between prosocial and financial motivations in general, while explaining why it does not apply in this case. The second, integrating, involves rejecting a tension between prosocial and financial motivations by making financial reward part of what makes their work meaningful. |
| spellingShingle | Mortimer, S Klein, K When a job is a calling: the meanings of money for meaningful work |
| title | When a job is a calling: the meanings of money for meaningful work |
| title_full | When a job is a calling: the meanings of money for meaningful work |
| title_fullStr | When a job is a calling: the meanings of money for meaningful work |
| title_full_unstemmed | When a job is a calling: the meanings of money for meaningful work |
| title_short | When a job is a calling: the meanings of money for meaningful work |
| title_sort | when a job is a calling the meanings of money for meaningful work |
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