The Experience of Meaninglessness at Work

This was a qualitative academic research project that aimed to understand and elucidate the experience of meaninglessness at work among Canadian public servants. The project was run out of the University of Ottawa with myself as Primary Investigator, and would not have been possible without the support of my incredible co-authors Dr. Samia Chreim and Dr. Silvia Bonaccio.

I conducted interviews with 25 current public servants who self-identified as experiencing meaninglessness at work. We analyzed the nature of the experience, its implications for people, and their responses.

We found that people were harmed by these experiences, making this an issue of ethical importance. We also looked at how meaningless work relates to the notions of bullshit jobs, empty labour, and functional stupidity.

The work was published in The Journal of Business Ethics, and you can access the paper here for free: https://rdcu.be/dDJKY.