Based on the conservation of resources (COR) theory, we investigate antecedents and consequences of work meaningfulness.
We used survey data from employees in various South Korean organizations and applied Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) and a bootstrapping procedure to test our proposed model.
We found that employees’ perceptions of their jobs’ social impact and task variety are positively related to work meaningfulness, which leads to higher levels of innovative behavior. We found that work meaningfulness mediates the effects of employees’ perceived social impact and task variety on their innovative behaviors.
Our study contributes to the positive psychology literature by identifying work meaningfulness as a critical underlying mechanism in explaining the relationship between task variety, perceived social impact, and innovative behavior.
