This study examines how destructive organisational contexts are associated with employees’ experiences of meaningful and meaningless work (MLW) and identifies psychological mechanisms and boundary conditions.
Two independent Polish employee samples were used. Study 1 employed a three-wave design (N = 1,966) to test Self-Determination Theory (SDT)-based longitudinal indirect associations linking organisational destructive context (ODC) to meaningful and MLW through basic psychological need frustration (NF), with autoregressive controls. Study 2 employed a two-wave design (N = 386) to test Conservation of Resources (COR) theory-informed boundary conditions involving grit and job growth mindset (JGM).
In Study 1, ODC was prospectively associated with higher NF, which was associated with lower meaningful work and higher MLW; both longitudinal indirect associations were significant. Study 2 replicated the component associations and showed that grit attenuated the ODC– NF association, while JGM attenuated both NF –meaning associations.
The study distinguishes meaningful from MLW, introduces ODC as a higher-order destructive work context and specifies an SDT-based core process with COR theory-informed, relationship-specific boundary conditions.
