André Alvinzi

Örebro University
andre.alvinzi@oru.se

Making Sense of the Experienced Meanings of Working for a Wage –

Suggestions for An Existential-Sociological Approach

Introduction

The work settings in which a majority of employed persons spend a substantial part of their
lives performing work tasks in order to earn a wage, can be described as structured according
to a twofold systemic hierarchy of needs, expectations, and demands. Within this framework,
the ideal-typical workplace is structured as a human system positioned in relation to a
technical/economic system. These two “systems” are characterized by an interwoven conflict
and negotiation process between the subjective human needs and expectations of employees
and the objective economic demands and expectations of the organization (Lysgaard, 1985).
Thus, with regards to the phenomenon of meaning in working life, as expressed by Findlay,
Thompson, Cooper and Townsend (2017: 122): “The questions that social scientists ask
concerning the meaning of work can be initially separated into what work wants from us and
what we want from it”.

In recent years, the classic narrative concerning what work “wants” (figuratively speaking)
from employees and what meaning employees want from work, has been highlighted and
elaborated on by social science scholars. Within this context, some argue theoretically that a
large quantity of jobs in Western societies are likely to be experienced as meaningless by
employees in terms of their societal contribution (Graeber, 2018). Others suggest that
regardless of occupation, paid work in itself in its current forms in Western societies is
generally unlikely to be experienced as meaningful by employees or meaningful to society
(Paulsen, 2010). In such arguments it is suggested in that “For the vast majority of people,
work offers no meaning, fulfilment or redemption” (Srnicek & Williams, 2015: 117), or that
“Most people probably realize that their jobs are meaningless” (Paulsen in Barr, 2015). A
number of recent survey studies partially support such broad and totalizing claims of a
widespread meaninglessness in working life. In Sweden, findings from a recent survey of
approximately 10000 individuals suggest that large numbers of Swedish service- and
manufacturing industry employees (18 per cent respectively 17 per cent) experience their jobs
as meaningless in terms of a perceived lack of societal relevance of what they do at work
(Jobbhälsoindex, 2019). Additionally, according to a British survey of 849 employees from a
diverse sample of occupations, many British employees think that their jobs lack meaning in
terms of not making a positive contribution to the world (37 per cent), or with regards to a
general lack of opportunities at work that facilitate personal fulfillment (33 per cent)
(Dahlgreen, 2015; Payscale, 2015).

However, in spite of various attempts at studying and operationalizing “meaning” within the
context of paid work, the majority of empirical studies remain at the surface level. Existing
studies either predominantly employ quantitative methodologies that reduce “meaning” to a
few items in questionnaires, or tend to remain at a theoretically abstract level that removes the
individual employee and her/his work experiences from the analytical picture. Existing
studies typically neglect deeper and phenomenological understandings of meaning based on
first person accounts. What is further rarely taken into consideration or only touched upon in
empirical meaning of work studies are purposive and existential dimensions of meaning in
terms of the perceived worthwhileness, purpose, and value of working. Despite that working
constitutes a substantial part of life for a majority of adult individuals, a majority of meaning
of work studies do not explore the existential meaning of working for a wage (what meaning
working is experienced to bring to one’s life), but are typically restricted to investigating
meaning or a lack thereof within the workplace. Consequently, as expressed by sociologist
Stephen Fineman with regards to the state of knowledge in existing meaning of work studies
“what seems to be missing (…) is an expression of the quintessence of work experience-a
phenomenological completeness which captures the implied/tacit understandings as well as
the manifest (Fineman, 1983: 146). According to Fineman, who stresses that the experienced
meanings of working for a wage cannot be restricted solely to experiences within workplace
settings, “it seems unlikely that such data are obtainable through the traditional study-method
and its ‘in-job’ setting” (ibid.). In other words, the meaning of working for a wage needs to be
understood in relation to non-work life domains from a more holistic perspective. If we accept
the existential-sociological assumption that “work can only have meaning in its fundamental
sense when it is regarded not just as a dimension of the employing institution but also as part
of an individual life and of our collective lives” (Sievers, 1986: 346-347), then, as Fineman
argues, an understanding of the meanings of paid work needs to approach the phenomenon of
paid work from a working life perspective, where it is recognized that working and its
meanings are part of individuals’ whole lives in terms of its influence on the structuring of
time, thought, emotion, and action. Within an existential-sociological framework, the question
of what meaning working is experienced to bring or take from life needs to be positioned in
relation to life outside of work, specifically with regards to temporal and structural life
turning points that highlight and rupture the taken-for-granted meanings constructed in and
through working life.

This paper contributes with a conceptual model for understanding the experienced purposive
meanings of working for a wage. Partially resonating with a number of other meaning of work
scholars’ critique of existing meaning of work studies, my basic argument is that empirical
explorations of the experienced meanings of paid work should not be restricted to the
workplace. I suggest that explorations of the meanings of paid work need to employ a more
“holistic” approach toward meaning which includes situated (meanings in the workplace) and
existential (meanings in life) dimensions of meaning. I argue that a more holistic
understanding of the meaning of working can be explored by acknowledging the relational-
processual features of meaning and its dependency on interconnectedness, specifically by
considering the existential phenomenon of temporality (past, present, and future) and its
connection to meaning construction and transitions between work and non-work life domains.
According to the ideas presented in this paper, the meanings of working for a wage can be
explored from a more inclusive and existential perspective through studying life transition
phenomena such as major and minor existential imperatives. Existential imperatives enable an
exploration of how presently and previously employed persons experience the meaning of
working for a wage from the perspective of major and minor turning points in life. Within this
framework, existential imperatives represent transitioning phases from work to non-work life
domains and how people make sense of their working life during such transitions, such as for
instance: retirement, weekends, parental leave, vacation periods, unemployment, sick leave,
and other transitions between working life and life outside of work.

Paper Structure

The paper is structured as follows. I begin by briefly situating historically and theoretically
the topic of the meaning of paid work. After this I present some general etymological and
theoretical starting points for how to ideal-typically conceptualize the phenomenon of

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meaning. Then I discuss and problematize how the concept of “meaning” is typically
employed in sociology and in existing meaning of work literature. Then I argue for the
relevance of combining phenomenological and sociological perspectives when exploring
empirically and theorizing how meaningfulness or lack of meaning is experienced by
employed persons within the domain of working life. This is done by demonstrating how and
in what sense humans’ relation to temporality (past, present, future) represents a crucial aspect
in understanding how purposive and existential meaning is constructed in relation to social
context, social structure and action. Lastly I connect the relational and temporal aspects of
meaning construction to the phenomenon of existential imperatives. Here I suggest that an
exploration of major and minor existential imperatives may facilitate development of more
nuanced and “holistic” understandings of the meaning of paid work. Lastly I conclude with
summarizing my arguments and by demonstrating some empirical examples of what kinds of
working life narratives may be generated in studies that adopt the current paper’s proposed
phenomenological understanding of meaning.

Some Central Social Science Theories of the Meanings of Paid Work: a Very Brief Historical
Perspective

What meanings paid work as a socio-economic institution has for society and what working
for a wage means personally to employed individuals’, have been discussed, theorized and
studied by lay persons, philosophers, theorists, and scholars from a variety of perspectives for
as long as the work form of wage labor emerged in societies (Fineman, 2012). In social
theory, working life and its meanings to the individual and society is one of the central arenas
among classics such as Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Émile Durkheim (Karlsson
& Månson, 2017). In the sociology of work literature and with regards to how the meanings
of modern forms of wage labor to society and the individual are understood by social science
scholars and non-scholars today, the philosophy and theories of Karl Marx have had a major
impact.

In terms of the general role of the practical activity of working and its outcomes in human
life, Marx distinguished between “labor” and “work”. In this context Marx viewed freely
determined and self-chosen work activities within the sphere of material necessity as a central
feature and ontological starting point of human existence. In Marx’s philosophy, it is through
performing work in the form of intentionally goal directed action, overcoming of obstacles,
extraction and manipulation of natural resources, and production of life necessities that
humans create and sustain themselves and their societies. Thus, for Marx, human work is
dialectically positioned in relation to material circumstances in the sense that the activity of
working extracts from and manipulates nature in order to produce something new (e.g. an
object of some sort, such as a pair of shoes, a knife, a house, or whatever). In Marx view, by
necessity it is the activity of work that generates the socio-material conditions humans are
embedded in and under which they operate and reproduce. This understanding of the
ontological meaning of work and its meanings for humans is addressed by Marx in The
German Ideology in the following psychological and anthropological assertion about work:

Man can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else

you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they
begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their physical
organisation. By producing their means of subsistence men are indirectly producing their
actual material life. (Marx, 1987: 18)

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In other words, for Marx the activity of working represents a central human endeavor located
within the sphere of necessity through which humans realize their needs for livelihood by
producing and sustaining themselves and their living conditions. In this context, by virtue of
necessity and as a species, humans have always had to work in various ways in order to
survive and reproduce themselves and their socio-material conditions under which they live.

Although Marx was primarily concerned with structural features of society and the economy
and aimed limited attention toward subjective features of work, in terms of the subjective
meaning of working at the personal and experiental level, Marx viewed freely chosen and
freely determined work as an outlet for creativity 1 and a potential source of personal
fulfillment, through which individuals attain self-determination and may express their
individual capacities and interests. This idea is highlighted in the following passage. Here
Marx gives a phenomenological account of the meaning of performing freely chosen work. In
this passage Marx departs from and criticizes Adam Smith’s conception of work, which he
deems far too instrumental and one-sided in the sense that it neglects aspects of (free) working
that may have intrinsic value and meaning for the individual (my emphasis):

But Smith has no inkling whatever that the overcoming of obstacles is in itself a
liberating activity—and that, further, the external aims become stripped of the semblance
of merely external natural urgencies, and become posited as aims which the individual
himself posits—hence as self-realization, objectification of the subject, hence real
freedom, whose action is, precisely, labor. He is right, of course, that, in its historic forms
as slave-labor, serf-labor, and wage-labor, labor always appears as repulsive, always as
external forced labor; and not-labor, by contrast, as “freedom and happiness.” This holds
doubly: for this contradictory labor; and relatedly, for labor which has not yet created the
subjective and objective conditions for itself…in which labor becomes attractive work,
the individual’s self-realization, which in no way means that it becomes mere fun, mere
amusement….Really free working…is at the same time precisely the most damned
seriousness, the most intensive exertion. (Marx & Nicolaus, 1973 [1939]: 534)

In other words, according to this effort-reward and strain-release logic of attaining subjective
satisfaction through overcoming obstacles, for Marx the process of overcoming of obstacles in
itself through performing freely chosen and freely determined work may constitute a source of
fulfilment, even though the work itself might be burdensome and significantly demanding for
the worker.

With regards to Marx’s conception of capitalist wage labor, because of its relation to capital,
exploitation, and generation of surplus value for owners of manufacturing enterprises, Marx
argued that the transition from pre-industrial forms of work to the novel work form of wage
labor under rationalized industrial-capitalist modes of production constituted a fundamental
change in societal organization and human life. According to Marx’s philosophy which is
immanently critical of capitalism, the novel forms of labor under rationalized industrial-
capitalist production processes represented a mass scale regimentation and alienation of the
human being, specifically for those who had to sell their time and labor in order to earn an

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Freely chosen creative work it is not subjectively satisfactory per definition. Performing freely chosen creative
work may involve numerous forms of obstacles and introduce different sources of anxiety. As noted by labor
process sociologist Robert Blauner in his empirical study of alienation and employees’ experiences of meaning
in different industrial work settings, “Even in the most unalienated conditions, work is never totally
pleasurable; in fact, the freest work, that of the writer or artist, usually involves long periods of virtual self-
torture. Such non-alienated work is never completely an end in itself; it is never totally without the element of
necessity” (Blauner, 1964: 31)

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income. Marx viewed capitalist wage labor as central domain of human bondage because of
its association with employee subordination to managerial control, the objectification of the
worker in the labor process, loss of ownership and control over the means of production, class
struggle, and increased socio-material and economic inequality. In Marx view, under
capitalism the human being became a means to an end in the economy and in the labor
process. She became alienated from her world, the objects of her production, her
surroundings, herself, and her fellow human beings. Marx’s assumptions of the existentially
objectifying and alienating tendencies in capitalist wage labor for the individual and its
consequences in terms of the loss of meaning in work, are outlined in the following passage
from “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844”. In this passage there is also an
assertion about the supposedly mentally deteriorating effects of repetitive manual labor that
resonates with Aristotle’s assumption that “all paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind” (in
Beder, 2001: 9):

(…) the fact that labor is external to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his intrinsic
nature; that in his work, therefore, he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not
feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but
mortifies his body and ruins his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself outside his
work, and in his work feels outside himself. He feels at home when he is not working,
and when he is working he does not feel at home. His labor is therefore not voluntary, but
coerced; it is forced labor. It is therefore not the satisfaction of a need; it is merely a
means to satisfy needs external to it. (---) Lastly, the external character of labor for the
worker appears in the fact that it is not his own, but someone else’s, that it does not
belong to him, that in it he belongs, not to himself, but to another. Just as in religion the
spontaneous activity of the human imagination, of the human brain and the human heart,
operates on the individual independently of him – that is, operates as an alien, divine or
diabolical activity – so is the worker’s activity not his spontaneous activity. It belongs to
another; it is the loss of his self. (Marx, 2000 [1932]: 31)

In other words, according to Marx’s philosophy and worldview, compared to prior non-
industrial capitalist work forms, the novel work forms of alienated industrial-capitalist wage
labor under strictly rationalized and fragmented working conditions led to a decomposition of
intrinsic meaning in work for the worker. In Marx view, compared to life prior to capitalist
development, people in capitalist societies became forced to work for someone else and to
perform monotonous operations under rationalized, fragmented, and drudgery conditions in
order to reach work goals determined by someone else.

A second historically central and scholarly influential theoretical perspective on what

meaning working for a wage brings to society and individuals’ lives, was developed by Max
Weber (1978 [1905]). In his dissertation “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism”
(1978 [1905]), Weber is critical of a narrow materialistic understanding of the emergence of
capitalism and the meaning of paid work. In this context, Weber theorized that the
development of modern forms of wage labor embedded in practices of entrepreneurial
capitalist production methods were not solely a result of the forms of economic determinism
and teleological change in material circumstances. Weber suggests that the emergence of
capitalist work practices and enterprises in the West also had an ideational foundation in that
they were partly rooted in puritan Protestant-Calvinist doctrines emerging in the seventeenth
century. These religious and subsequently ideological doctrines endorsed a form of rationality
grounded in a Puritan Protestant ethic, which proclaimed that all paid work regardless of its
nature, the act of saving money, continuous investment of earnings, entrepreneurship, and an
ascetic attitude toward work and leisure constituted morally superior modes of being. In this

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way, regardless of its form or content, hard work and an ascetic life style symbolized practices
of moral virtue which constituted central sources of generating meaning in life. The ideas
prescribed by this Calvinist branch of the Protestant ethic represented a puritan self-
restraining way of life that was subordinated to God’s will in the sense that compliance to the
Calvinist doctrines and work ethic acted as the primary means to serve the common good and
realizing God’s plan for humanity and its salvation (ibid.). Consequently, the activity of
working for a wage constituted an end in itself for all people, and represented a central source
of existential meaning and purpose in life (ibid.).

With regards to Durkheim’s theory of the meaning of work, just as Marx he did not focus on
the meaning of work at the subjective level but had a macro-structural approach. By departing
from the macro level of analysis Durkheim theorized about the societal function of wage labor
with regards to how it contributed to societal integration. For Durkheim, the division of labor
in modern society had a structural meaning. Within this framework, the division of labor
functioned as a societal glue of fitting different segments of the labor market and working
persons to the organic whole of society through contributing different services and products
that satisfied different individual and societal needs. In turn, in Durkheim’s view, the division
of labor in society generated an organic solidarity between its members and was constitutive
in producing a moral foundation upon which the norms and practices of modern society was
built (Durkheim, 1997).

Marx’s, Weber’s, and Durkheim’s theories of work and wage labor have been influential in
laying a theoretical ground for how social science scholars and others understand the meaning
of paid work. Specifically Marxist thought and Marxist ideological assumptions about work
and industrial-capitalist wage labor are often employed in sociological inquiries about wage
labor as the central analytic starting point (see e.g. Adorno, 2001 [1944]; Braverman, 2001;
Sennett, 1998; Blauner, 1964; Edwards, 1979; Burawoy, 1979). In terms of Weber’s theory of
a Puritan work ethic, it has been employed by scholars as an analytical framework for
exploring the phenomenon of calling in the context of the existential meanings of paid work
(see e.g. Bengtsson, Flisbäck & Lund, 2017; Bengtsson & Flisbäck, 2016). However,
regardless of the historical importance and the influence of their theories in understandings of
the meanings of paid work, from the perspective of contemporary epistemological and
methodological trends, both Marx, Weber, and Durkheim are guilty of producing grand
narratives and totalizing claims about the meaning of work. In other words, they did not
engage in qualitative inquiries by explicitly or directly focusing on the meaning of work from
a first-hand phenomenological perspective of employees.

The Concept of Meaning

Having briefly introduced and situated historically some central social theories that explore
the meaning of unpaid work and paid work indirectly, I will now turn to one of the central
entities of the present paper: meaning. It is important to note initially that meaning as a
phenomenon is located on a positive-negative continuum in the sense that “meaningfulness”
and “meaninglessness” represent the amount of significance attached by humans to something
(Arnoux-Nicolas, Sovet, Lhotellier & Bernaud, 2017; Hirschi, 2012). In other words, at the
subjective level, meaningfulness or lack of meaning refers to whether or to what extent
something is experienced by persons to have significance and value, and therefore to matter
and be worthwhile.

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In terms of meaning as a philosophical and metaphysical problem, numerous historical figures
among analytic and continental philosophers and theologians have discussed existential
meaning, either in explicit or implicit terms in relation to question “what is the meaning of
human life?” or “how do humans create meaning in life?” (Baumeister, 1991). More recently,
with regards to how to articulate what “meaning” and its aspects of “meaningfulness” and
“meaninglessness” signify, some meaning scholars argue that any attempt to arrive at a final
articulation of what “meaning” signifies will inevitably lead to circular arguments and an
infinite regress because “meaning” has to be employed in order to make sense of the concept
in itself (Baumeister, 1991; Csíkszentmihályi, 2008 [1990]). This conceptual situation might
be related to the notion that “meaning” is an abstraction of something already abstract: there is
little or no agreement on how to articulate its ontological starting points.

In terms of what analytical levels meaning can be approached from, the metaphysical level
represents one possible alternative (see e.g. Weber’s (1978) account of the existential
meaning of work in “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism”). A second abstraction
level toward inquiry about “meaning” within the sphere of paid work, is to remain at the
micro level of analysis. Within this framework the focal point is that meaning is a subjective
matter of interpretation, personality characteristics, personal preferences, choices, needs,
desires and additional subjective aspects. According to this perspective, whatever course of
action a person consciously or unconsciously “chooses” to embark on, she chooses so because
it is subjectively meaningful to her, irrespective whether others deem the action and its
outcome meaningful. Thus, in this case meaning remains within a subjective-ideational
framework (Yeoman, Bailey, Madden & Thompson, 2019). A third way of making sense of
what meaning represents, how it emerges, and which function it has within the context of
work, is to resort to the macro/meso level. This framework suggests that meaning or what is
perceived as meaningful/meaningless is socially and discursively constructed through
ideological, intersubjective and linguistic processes which are generated, taking place within
and shaped by different social structures and power hierarchies (Alvesson, Gabriel & Paulsen,
2017). And lastly, a fourth perspective on how to approach analytically the
phenomenon/concept of meaning is to recognize that all above abstraction levels are
interconnected and interweaved with one another. This latter approach is the one that I
sympathize with in the present paper.

Given the multiplicity of perspectives and understandings surrounding the concept and
phenomenon of meaning, and within the meaning of work literature in particular, it might be
assumed that there is limited possibility to articulate any general features of “meaning”
(existential meaning and purposive meaning) and its aspects of “meaningfulness” and
“meaninglessness”. However, there are some general characteristics of meaning that may act
as an analytical base and epistemological starting point for inquiries into meaning. In the
following, in order to introduce these starting points of “meaning”, I begin at the etymological
level and then proceed to the theoretical level.

The Meaning of Meaning – a Relational Phenomenon of Interconnectedness

Etymologically, the word “meaning” stems from the word “sense” and refers to the relevance,
significance and/or value something is assumed or experienced to have in relation to a

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whole 2. Thus, according to this perspective the “meaning” of something (whatever it might
be) can only be understood when it is positioned in relation to a perceived or objective whole.
The key point here is that using points of references which are located outside whatever
meaning is consciously or unconsciously assigned to, is a main prerequisite for something to
be experienced to have any meaning at all. Thus, meaning construction is a relational
phenomenon that is generated through a process of connecting parts to an objective or
perceived whole.

At the theoretical level, although there are ever-ongoing debates of how to articulate what
“meaning” represents conceptually and phenomenon in human life, according to meaning
scholar Robert Baumeister (1991), a possible heuristic model (ideal-type) for how to
conceptualize meaning - which resonates with the etymological definition – is that “meaning”
signifies “shared mental representations of possible relationships among things, events, and
relationships” (ibid.: 15). Here the word “possible” is of central importance from a
phenomenological perspective in the sense that “possible relationships” highlights that
potentiality is a crucial aspect in meaning construction. The phenomenological aspect of
potentiality, which is also related to the phenomenon of temporality (past, present, future),
will be addressed in detail and connected to the activity of wage labor in the paragraphs
below. The term “shared” is equally important here in defining “meaning”. This is because it
highlights the intersubjective and socially constructed nature of meaning; in other words the
notion that different social processes and social structures influence in what ways and for
what reasons meaning is generated. This aspect will also be discussed further in the
paragraphs below.

In terms of the etymological definition of meaning and its theoretical relevance, it is further
echoed in Baumeister’s theoretical definition of meaning. Within this definition “meaning is a
matter of connecting things up into broad patterns” (ibid.: 303). This theoretical definition
thus suggests that for humans, meaning has a function: to associate and fit parts into a
coherent pattern. This generates a sense of interconnectedness which helps us make sense of
and understand phenomena, events, and experiences, and therefore in the broader sense and
long run, our place in the world and the significance our lives and actions have in relation to
others, things, events, experiences, contexts, and so on (Nozick, 1981; Antonovsky, 1987;
Baumeister, 1991; Svendsen, 2003).

In order to illustrate the phenomenon of meaning and its relational character of

interconnectedness, it is pedagogically useful to employ a hypothetical empirical example of
how meaning may “function” in a real-world setting. For instance, in the context of meaning
and communication, if a person uses the word “cat” in order to communicate to a friend with
whom she is taking a walk that she has observed a cat across the street, she uses the word
“cat” in order to make sense of and communicate her perception of a particular kind of animal
that has been culturally accepted to describe using the word “cat”. She knows that the animal
is a “cat” because as she grew up she was taught by adults to use the signifier “cat” and to
distinguish it from other animals, such as for instance dogs. In relation to all other animals, it
makes sense for her and her friend that they refer to the animal across the street as a “cat”
because they associate it with their previous encounters with cats. They both know,
subjectively and inter-subjectively, what the situation means. The communicative act of
saying “look, there is a cat on the other side of the street!” becomes intelligible and therefore
communicatively meaningful for both the observer and her friend. Given that they live in the

2
See e.g. https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=meaning

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same culture and speak the same language, the sentence has intersubjective significance for
the two friends because they can both understand it according to certain criteria and principles
(e.g. cats can purr and are different from dogs). However, if the case is that the person who
observes the cat has a deep personal relation to cats in the sense that she have always had cats
as pets in her life, and therefore cares specifically much about cats, but the friend has no
personal relation to cats, the observation of the cat across the street might be rendered more
meaningful to the observer than her friend. This form of meaningfulness arises from the fact
that the observer might assign intrinsic value to the experience of perceiving the cat by virtue
of having a deep interest and personal relation to cats, a relation that is connected to her life
story (e.g. growing up with cats in her home). In this sense, the experience of observing a cat
attains greater significance for the observer than the friend. Compared to the friend who may
not have such a personal relation to cats, it is likely that the observer cares more about cats
and therefore experiences seeing a cat as a more worthwhile and meaningful event than her
friend.

An additional less mundane example that illustrates the relational-processual character of

meaning in terms of its dependency on points of reference, is the idea that the existential
question of the meaning of life can only be explored if it is positioned in relation to the one
single event that marks the final objective reference point of life: death (Heidegger, 2013;
Sievers, 1994). Lastly, with regards to the relational-processual character of meaning and
inquiries into existential meanings, others argue that the question of the meaning of life may
only be grasped when it is understood in relation to a purpose that has been determined by a
metaphysical, and infinite divine being (God) (Affolter, 2007; Camus, 2005 [1955]).

Within the context of the meaning of paid work, the relational-processual characteristic of
meaning is echoed in the following assertion by labor process sociologist Robert Blauner:

Meaninglessness alienation reflects a split between the part and the whole. A person
experiences alienation of this type when his individual acts seem to have no relation to a
broader life-program. Meaninglessness also occurs when individual roles are not seen as
fitting into the total system of goals of the organization but have become severed from
any organic connection with the whole. The non-alienated state is understanding of a life-
plan or of an organization's total functioning and activity which is purposeful rather than
meaningless. (Blauner, 1964: 32)

The core idea illustrated in the above examples of the relational character of meaning
construction as a phenomenon of interconnectedness is that when persons experience
something as meaningful or non-meaningful (intelligible and/or worthwhile, valuable, or
significant), whatever it might be, they always unconsciously or consciously position their
experience in relation to a broader frame that is located outside of the specific
object/phenomenon meaning is attached to (Schütz, 1959; Blauner, 1964; Baumeister, 1991).

The Reductive Conception of Meaning in Sociology and Meaning of Work Literature –

Opportunities for further Research

In the previous sections I addressed the relational-interconnected and existential character of

meaning and its interweaved connection with broader frames of reference located outside of
whatever object, event, action, or experience meaning is attached to. In sociology, “meaning”
is a central theme. Within this framework, two sociology figures focusing on meaning are

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Herbert Blumer and Erving Goffman. Their texts are aimed at theorizing about the meaning-
making processes we engage in when making sense of and thus comprehending singular and
connected objects, symbols, different forms of communication, action, and interaction
(Blumer, 1986 [1969]; Goffman, 1990 [1959]). In the realm of linguistics and philosophy of
language, Jacques Derrida (1982) theorized about the meanings, contradictions,
inconsistencies, ambiguities, significances, and limitations in discourse and text.

Despite the recurring focus on meaning in sociology literature, the concept of meaning is
often adopted in a habitual and reductive manner or taken as a given. In this context the
concept of meaning tends to be taken-for-granted and employed in a programmatic manner
with little or no elaboration on what it signifies or refers to in terms of its theoretical and
philosophical underpinnings (Daher et al., 2017). Moreover, as noted by Paulsen (2014: 174)
in an assertion about the reductive use and contemporary status of the concept of meaning in
sociology in general and its status within the meaning of work literature in particular,
“sociologists often write about meaning, but the “meaning” they care about mostly has to do
with our understanding of things – “meaning” as in “denotation” or “interpretation”.
According to Paulsen, what is typically neglected in sociological writings and meaning of
work literature is the “existential, purposive aspect of the meaning concept – “meaning” as in
“the meaning of life” or “a meaningless job” (Paulsen, 2014: 174 in reference to Dreyfus &
Kelly, 2011).

In the meaning of work literature - a context where qualitative empirical studies remain scarce
- various independent conclusions about the meanings of paid work have been made.
Resonating with the idea of postmodern perspectivism, these assumptions are located at
different levels of abstraction and explore the meanings of paid work from different
perspectives and approaches. In the social sciences, the existing meaning of work research
landscape with its multiple analytical starting points, ambiguous assumptions, and diverse
findings has resulted in a lack of theoretical syntheses. Only a few attempts have been made at
generating theoretical integrations (see e.g. Dekas et al., 2010). Consequently, similarly to the
postmodern state of knowledge (Lyotard, 1994) within the discipline of sociology in general
(Davis, 1994), the condition of knowledge in the meaning of work-literature is characterized
by fragmentation and diversity. In the meaning of work literature, the meanings of paid work
has been explored by for instance psychologists, management scholars, HR-development
scholars, organization study scholars, sociologists, theologians, and philosophers. This has led
to epistemic fragmentation in the form of independent disciplinary domains existing in
“silos” 3 organized around various sources of meaning and meaningfulness” (Dekas et al.,

3
The presumably postmodern condition of knowledge in the sense of an epistemic fragmentation effect in
academia and its consequences for knowledge production, was highlighted already in the 1950’s by sociologist
C. Wright Mills (2001 [1959]). Mills argued that the emergence of “cliques” of narrowly focused disciplines and
scholars was a consequence of specialization and rationalization of knowledge production within the social
sciences. In a similar but contemporary critique of the “publish and perish” doctrine, hyper-specialization of
research interests and a destruction of meaning in social science research, Alvesson, Gabriel and Paulsen
(2017) argue that today, the situation Mill’s described in the 1950’s has become even more pertinent. The gist
of their argument suggests that despite that a large quantity of the knowledge produced in the social sciences
might very well be meaningful to the researchers themselves and their “micro-tribes”, it nevertheless often
lacks a wider social relevance and meaning to the public. The authors argue that the destruction of meaning in
social science scholarship results not only from intensive rationalization but also from the notion that rather
than addressing concrete and pressing social issues, social science scholars tend to produce large quantities of
socially irrelevant research that remains within the confines of academia and therefore is meaningless outside
the sphere of academia. Alvesson and colleagues suggest that this is because social science academics are
socialized into modes of thinking and publish-or-perish practices that reward fetishizing of method and

10
2010: 91). For these reasons, various empirical and abstract theoretical assumptions exist with
regards to what the concept of “meaning” signifies in the context of wage labor and what
meanings employed persons themselves actually experience in work, and why they
experience particular meanings or a lack of thereof. What is typically underexplored are
approaches to the meaning of work from an existential sociological perspective, in other
words what influence working life is experienced by employees themselves to have on
generation of meaning in life (Bailey et al., 2019; Paulsen, 2014; Dekas et al., 2010; Sievers,
1994).

The present state of knowledge in the meaning of work literature invites social scientists to a
number of research opportunities. An additional central opportunity in the meaning of work
literature that invites problematization and paves way for further research, is that the concept
of meaning tends not only to be used in a taken-for-granted, confusing and diverse way, but is
also poorly defined and simplified. In this context, just as in sociology in general, the concept
of “meaning” is typically used without reference to its theoretical and philosophical
underpinnings (Puplampu, 2009). Moreover, existing studies tend to adopt mixed
terminologies and conflate aspects of meaning with other constructs (Bailey et al. 2019). For
example, there is a tendency to use concepts such as for instance “motivation”, “work values”,
“attitudes to work”, “work ethic”, “work/job involvement”, and “work goals” interchangeably
with “meaning” (see e.g. International Research Team, 1986; Sievers, 1994; Puplampu, 2009;
Paulsen 2014). Additionally, in spite of sociology of work scholars’ preoccupation with
studying the topic of wage labor and the strong influence of Marxist perspectives in which the
meaning of work is an indirect but central theme, there are surprisingly few qualitative
sociological meaning of work-studies. What is lacking specifically are studies that have a
direct focus on and explicit approach toward the phenomenon of meaning and its relation to
what people think, feel, and reason about the worthwhileness of what they do at work and
their working lives as a whole. What purposive meanings do employees find in their work
tasks and attribute to the goals these tasks are aimed at reaching? What tends to be
specifically absent in the literature, are studies focusing on the significance attributed to work
actions by employees themselves (“significance” in terms of whether something is
experienced as meaningful, worthwhile or matters to the Self and/or others), and what
meanings people experience that working life brings to the totality of their lives.

To sum up so far, a taken for granted adoption of a theoretically limited or confused and
diverse conception of meaning in sociology in general and in the meaning of work literature
in particular, is problematic since its deeper roots of existential and purposive aspects remain
obscured, veiled, neglected, or even ignored. In what follows I attempt to bring some clarity
into what is meant by purposive and existential meanings, and how these theoretical
approaches can be applied in explorations of employee experiences of meaning in working
life.

Weberian and Phenomenological Approaches to Meaning

In terms of how purposive aspects of the concept of “meaning” is typically employed in

sociology, and in what sense “meaning” became a central focus in phenomenological
sociology, Max Weber’s theory of purposive meaning and its relation to action, and Alfred
Schütz elaboration of this theory through relating it to Husserlian phenomenology have had a

technique, viewing filling gaps in the literature as an end in itself. This results in, according to the authors, that
scholars follow and adopt institutionalized academic rituals that predominantly focus more on the form of
research rather than its content.

11
central position. The Weberian-phenomenological approach to meaning in conjunction with
Heidegger’s (see e.g. Heidegger, 2013) phenomenological understanding of the meaning of
Being (human existence) from the perspective of practical life and temporality, are relevant
for meaning of work studies for several reasons. First, this approach specifically focuses on
action and its relation to the meaning individuals attach to different everyday actions (e.g.
actions within the workplace). Secondly, this approach is aimed at understanding in what way
complexes of personal motives behind carrying out actions are intertwined with what meaning
individuals experience while performing them and reaching their goals. And thirdly, Weber’s
theory, in conjunction with a phenomenological approach (see e.g. Schütz, 1967; Heidegger,
2013; Husserl, 1973), emphasizes the relative, social-contextual, subjective, and
intersubjective nature of meaning. Within this framework, a central feature of meaning is that
it is both subjectively constructed and influenced by contextual factors (e.g. norms, values,
ideologies, institutions, and other social structures).

Just as the concept of meaning is most commonly used in sociology, Max Weber approached
the concept of meaning from the perspective of comprehension and understanding. However,
Weber also explored meaning from the perspective of purpose and motive. Weber related
these latter aspects or meaning to a theory of social action 4. In Weberian terms, in order to
understand (Verstehen) what significance actions have for individuals and groups, we should
examine the perspectives of actors themselves simply by asking ourselves why they perform
certain actions. In other words: what motivate people to perform certain actions and what
meanings do they attach to them? (Weber, 1978). In his book “Economy and Society”, Weber
(ibid. 9-10) frames the connection between action and meaning in a hypothetical empirical
example of a laboring woodcutter and a person who is aiming a gun:

[…] we understand the chopping of wood or aiming of a gun in terms of motive in

addition to direct observation if we know that the woodchopper is working for a
wage or is chopping a supply of firewood for his own use or possibly doing it for
recreation. But he might also be working off a fit of rage, an irrational case.
Similarly we understand the motive of a person aiming a gun if we know that he
has been commanded to shoot as a member of a firing squad, that he is fighting
against an enemy, or that he does it for revenge.

In other words, in order to comprehend the subjective purposive meaning of others’ actions
(e.g. actions in the form of work tasks), as observers we need to attain information about the
context in which the actions are carried out and what motivated their actions. In Weber’s
terms we also need to understand the actions’ relation to said context, and attain knowledge
about what significance the actions have for the actor her/himself in terms of what kinds of
motives she/he has for performing them. Thus, according to Weber’s idea, an actor-oriented
approach toward understanding subjective dimensions of the meaning of action is a
prerequisite for grasping “larger” meanings, in the sense of why individuals and groups act in
certain manners and why specific phenomena arise out of such actions (Weber, 1978).
Applied to the life domain of working for a wage, in order to understand what meaning
actions in the form of work tasks may have for an employee - whether or in which ways
she/he finds them significant, worthwhile and thus meaningful or lacking meaning, as
observers we might ask ourselves: what motivates her/him to perform them, how she/he

4
Weber’s conception of action has been criticized of suffering from a cognitivist bias. According to some critics
Weber’s theory of action is based on a reductive and overly economic-rational understanding of the human
being which neglects unconscious motives and non-reflective behavior patterns (Heiskala, 2011).

12
experiences performing such actions in terms of their worthwhileness, if or in what ways
she/he values the outcomes of them, and to whom or what she/he perceives them having
significance (e.g. the Self or society).

Within a phenomenological and existential-sociological framework, which is central for the

present paper because it enables a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the meaning of
work than previously employed in meaning of work studies, there is an assumption that
humans are “hard-wired” toward meaning. Here it is argued that humans’ “built-in” tendency
to impose meaning to things, events, and experiences, or the will to meaning as others call it
(Frankl, 1959, 2003), is a fundamental prerequisite for understanding the world and being
able to operate in it in any sense at all. In phenomenology, meaning is central existential
problem for humans. Within this framework it is even suggested that humans are condemned 5
to meaning in the sense that as interpreting creatures we can never escape the process of
sensemaking. This is because in order to understand ourselves and the world, whether we like
it or not we either unconsciously or consciously attempt to make sense of things by attaching
or imposing pre-constructed meanings to phenomena and experiences (Merleau-Ponty, 2002).
Resonating with this assumption that humans have an innate need for meaningfulness and that
we are always trapped within a mode of sensemaking, is Hegelian philosopher/sociologist
Slavoj Žižek’s idea that individuals may be specifically prone to attach falsely constructed
meanings to particularly ambiguous events and experiences. This means that in order to make
an increasingly fragmented and complex world more intelligible, people may feel pressured or
desire to impose distorted or false meanings to events and experiences that are particularly
difficult to grasp. According to Žižek, a consequence of this phenomenon of imposing
distorted or “false” meanings to experiences and societal events, is the increasing generation
and popularity of conspiracy theories (Žižek, 2006).

In terms of analytic starting points in phenomenology, early scholars associated with

phenomenology are grounded in the assumption that if we want to understand meaning,
human consciousness represents the central unit of analysis. For early phenomenologists, the
structure of human consciousness represents the fundamental condition for the possibility of
knowledge. A central phenomenological point here is that it is through the intentionality of
consciousness in the form of its inevitable attention toward phenomena and our interpretation
of these phenomena that we develop a taken for granted understanding of the world, give it
significance and thus construct personal, interpersonal, and existential meanings (Husserl,
1973; Schütz, 1967). These meanings are generated and manifested when humans as
inherently social beings who “are always somehow already situated in a social setting in
which one complies with social conventions (e.g. emerging from culture, social structures, life
in relation to others, etc.)” interpret and make sense of what is going on around them and fit
things and events into a whole of social, temporal, and cognitive contexts (Aspers & Kohl,
2013: 497 in reference to Heidegger, 2001a [1928–9]: 140). According to this understanding,
the social is not separate from but embedded in the individual. Subjective and intersubjective
experiences of meaning renders it possible for humans not only to construct situated meanings
and existential meanings, but also to individually and collectively develop a horizon of shared
existential and social meanings which are often take for granted negotiated, and agreed on or
disagreed upon with others (Heidegger; 2013; Husserl, 1973; Merleau-Ponty, 2002; Schütz,
1967).

13
Meaning as a Temporally Structured Phenomenon Emerging from Interpretation of Past,
Present, and Potential Future Experiences

As I have demonstrated briefly above in the above section about Weberian and
phenomenological approaches to purposive meaning and existential meaning, a
phenomenological perspective on meaning focuses not only on situational meanings (e.g.
experiences of meaningfulness or meaninglessness within the workplace during the course of
a workday). At the core of phenomenological understandings of meaning is also a broader
connection to temporality. In sociology in general, and in meaning of work studies in
particular, temporality and its relation to meaning is an empirically and theoretically neglected
phenomenon (Bergmann, 1992; Bailey & Madden, 2017). In phenomenology and
phenomenological sociology, the relation between temporality, experience, and meaning
specifically highlights the relational and existential character of meaning because it connects
meaning construction to present, past and potential future events, experiences, actions, and
goals (Heidegger, 2013; Schütz, 1967). Consequently, within this framework, meaning is a
relationally and temporally structured phenomenon of interconnectedness between the past,
present, and future. This triadic conceptualization of temporality does not refer to the modern
socio-culturally constructed quantified and rationalized temporal ordering or linear clock
time, as in hours, minutes, seconds, weeks, months, and so on. Rather, it refers to humans’,
attunement toward and interpretation of past, present, and potential future experiences, events,
actions, and goals. Within this temporal horizon it is suggested that temporality6 and its
relation to meaning is an inherent social/contextual and existential aspect of all spheres of our
lives and modes of “Being” (existence) in the world (Heidegger, 1962: 27). In this context
“attunement” refers to the different aspects in life that persons for various reasons care 7about
and are concerned about, in other words those things, events, and experiences that attract
individuals’ interest, matter to them, and therefore either become meaningful or lack meaning
to them (Heidegger, 2013). According to this phenomenological understanding of meaning,
temporality is crucial for exploring the situated and existential meanings different phenomena
have in localized situations and in the totality of persons’ lives. Within the triadic frame of
past, present, and future, the basic phenomenological argument is thus that construction of
meaning in the present is a process that is influenced and shaped by understandings of past
experiences and perceived future potentialities (see e.g. Heidegger, 2013; Schütz, 1967).

In order to render the temporal aspects of meaning introduced above less abstract, as they
have been developed primarily by Husserl (1973), Heidegger (2013), Arendt (1998 [1958])
and partially also by Schütz (1932), it is pedagogically useful to invoke an everyday example
from practical life activities which may be located within the sphere of work (paid or unpaid).
Why not make use of the situation you as a reader may find yourself situated in right now?
Perhaps you are bored of reading this text because you think that you have more important
things to do, tasks that have required lots of time and effort in the past and for different

6
Heidegger refers specifically to the existential aspect of temporality and meaning construction with the
concept of Being-toward-death. Being-toward-death refers to the universally democratic and objective
existential fact that all individuals’ lives are always positioned in relation to and headed toward the inevitable
future event of death. When individuals become aware of and begin to reflect upon their Being-toward-death,
they may begin to reevaluate the meaning of their life and what renders it worthwhile and purposeful.
7
This notion of subjective meaningfulness that emerges from care and concern has an ethical-normative
element. For instance, a person may very well experience morally unacceptable actions as personally
meaningful, authentic, and worth caring for, or vice versa: she/he may experience morally virtuous actions as
meaningless, non-authentic, and not worth caring for (see e.g. Ciulla in Yeoman, Bailey, Madden & Thompson,
2019).

14
reasons need to be finished in the near future. In other words, you may be bored of reading
this text right now because you are concerned with certain things that you simply care more
about because you have invested substantial labor effort and time in them in the past. If this is
the case, text you are reading now risks becoming boring and dull, which in turn might set
you in an anxious mood. Your reading experience may therefore begin to lack meaning to
you. In such a situation, perhaps you want to make use of your present working hours by
working on other things that you care more about, things you think have been important in the
past and may have crucial significance in the future. However, the opposite might also be
true. You may experience reading this text as more meaningful than other tasks that need to
be performed in the future, tasks which you may not care about as much as reading this text.

From an even more mundane perspective, perhaps you are beginning to get bored of reading
this text right now because your past participation in culturally constructed collective coffee
drinking practices (in Sweden known as “fika”) have rendered you caffeine-dependent and
therefore makes you desire a cup of coffee right now. Influenced by these past social practices
your attention becomes directed toward that potential future cup of coffee. You begin to care
more about that cup of coffee than reading this text. If the latter is the case, your relation to
your past experiences of coffee drinking and your focus on the potential of that supposedly
nice cup of coffee that you desire, colors your experience of meaning in the present. Your
reading experience begins to feel meaningless. In turn this may influence what action you
consciously or unconsciously decide to perform, which in the present case could be to decide
to leave your work station in order to get a cup of coffee. Consequently, within this context,
your past experiences (of coffee drinking) might render your reading experience not as
meaningful as it could have been under different temporal and contextual circumstances.

In order to illustrate the relation between meaning and temporality with a contemporary
empirical example that sheds light on how temporality influences construction of existential
meaning, there is one particular topic in the present time that according to my interpretation is
relevant to reflect upon: climate change. In a speech by climate activist Greta Thunberg
(2018) directed to UN secretary António Guterres, Thunberg addresses her experiences of
meaninglessness in terms of a perceived present and future futileness of earning a university
degree in order to become a climate scientist, which according to her critics would be a more
fruitful way of tackling the climate problem than engaging in activism. She addresses her
existential concerns in the present by relating her experiences of a lack of educational
meaning in the present and future (“what’s the point?”) to the existential risks associated with
the detrimental environmental effects human activities have had in the past. She further
stresses how past and present human activities are producing more environmental degradation
and escalating climate change in the present, and how things will get worse globally in a
future which according to her interpretation of the situation is lost if proper measures are not
taken:

Some people say that I should be in school instead. Some people say that I should study
to become a climate scientist so that I can ”solve the climate crisis”. But the climate crisis
has already been solved. We already have all the facts and solutions. And why should I be
studying for a future that soon may be no more, when no one is doing anything to save
that future? And what is the point of learning facts when the most important facts clearly
means nothing to our society? (Thunberg, 2018)

The basic phenomenological point about existential meaning I have attempted to illustrate
with the quote from Thunberg and the hypothetical examples above about temporality and its
influence on situated meaning construction, is that subjective interpretations of past social and

15
individual experiences and subjective viewpoints of the future conditions the present in terms
of what individuals are concerned about; what people are attuned toward in the world and
what we (as humans) care about. Past and potential future experiences and the social aspects
that influence and structure them subsequently influences what we direct our attention at and
interpret as meaningful or lacking meaning in the present. What this boils down to, in essence,
is that the past and the future is always and already here in that it colors the meaning of your
experiences and actions in the present (Heidegger, 2013). In other words, past, present, and
potential future experiences are crucial reference points in how meaning is constructed.

In terms of the relevance the above outlined phenomenological understanding of meaning for
meaning of work studies, sociologists Catherine Bailey’s and Adrian Madden’s (2017)
phenomenological study of temporality and its relation to the experience of meaning in work
and its end results represents an illuminating example. In this study the authors interviewed
refuse collectors, stonemasons, and academics about what purposive meaning and sense of
worthwhileness they experienced in their jobs. Regarding differences in experiences of
meaning across different occupational groups, the authors concluded that experiences of
meaningfulness or a lack of meaning in work was “not merely confined to professionals or
craftspeople but can extend to workers in stigmatized occupations” (ibid.: 4). In all of these
occupations, transcendence of the here-and-now in terms of projecting one’s actions and their
outcomes into the future by perceiving the potential of one’s work in a future context was a
crucial factor for experience of meaningfulness in work. A central finding in this study was
that meaningfulness is rarely “experienced merely in the moment, but rather it emerges from
an appreciative or reflective act in which the significance of the moment is perceived within a
wider timescape”, for instance in terms of “the perceived significance of events not yet come”
(ibid.: 15). Conversely, a lack of meaning or meaninglessness was associated with employees’
perceived lack of control over time in the sense of “having a temporal pace imposed on their
work with which they disagreed eroded a sense of work being meaningful” (ibid.: 14).

Exploring the Existential Meanings of Working for a Wage in Relation to Non-work: the
Case of Existential Imperatives

In the previous section I demonstrated how a phenomenological understanding of meaning

emphasizes that construction of situated and existential meaning is related to and
interconnected with experience, interpretation, and temporality (past, present, future). In the
following section I elaborate on these phenomenological ideas about meaning and connect
them further to the context of working life. I do this by addressing the phenomenon of
“existential imperatives”. Here I argue that because existential imperatives highlight the
relational and temporal character of meaning construction and resonate with the idea that the
meanings of paid work can be explored more holistically by approaching it from the
perspective of non-work, existential imperatives provide opportunities for developing deeper
understandings of the meanings of paid work.

The concept ”existential imperatives” refers to transitional phases and turning points during
one’s life course. When going through a major existential imperative, the individual may
experience a heightened awareness of her own mortality and therefore begin to retrospectively
reflect upon what relation her prior life experiences have had in construction of existential
meanings (meanings in life) (Jackson, 2005; Jackson, 2013). The phenomenon of existential
imperatives thus specifically highlights the relational character of meaning because of its
connection to past, present, and future experiences and their relation to meaning construction,
as suggested by phenomenologists such as for instance Schütz (1932) and Heidegger (2013).

16
In the following passage, Schütz highlights the role of temporality in the construction of
subjective meaning and its relationship to reflective acts of interpretation of past experiences:

Meaning does not lie in the experience. Rather, those experiences are meaningful which
are grasped reflectively. The meaning is the way in which the Ego regards its experience.
The meaning lies in the attitude of the Ego toward that part of its stream of consciousness
which has already flowed by, toward its ‘elapsed duration’ (Schütz 1932: 69–70; original
emphasis).

Echoing with Schütz’s emphasis of these central retrospective aspects of interpretation of

experiences and meaning construction, within the context of existential imperatives, it is in
the context of a life course and its transitions between life domains, experiences, and events
that “experience develops as a constant flow, and its main characteristic is that it is taken for
granted, it is when this flow is stopped and attention is directed to what has already occurred
that the experience takes on a special meaning and is translated into available knowledge”
(Daher, Carré, Jaramillo, Olivares & Tomicic, 2017: 9).

One example of a transitional phase in life that represents a major existential imperative and
which highlights the retrospective and temporal aspect of meaning construction is the process
of transitioning from work to retirement (Bengtsson, Flisbäck & Lund, 2017; Bengtsson &
Flisbäck, 2016). Within this framework, in terms of occupation and activity, retirement is a
socially constructed ordering of the life course, which represents a non-paid work life domain
and mode of being that is positioned in relation to and in opposition to a regular working life.
For many individuals the transition from work to retirement introduces a disruption of and
fundamental change in taken-for-granted everyday habits, practices and meaning-structures.
During such transitions the action contexts and social structures the individual is embedded in
within her working life, may become radically changed or even lost; in other words, they may
become a feature of the past. In phenomenological terms, major existential imperatives
represent the considerable temporal-contextual changes and reorienting of individuals’
biographical and current stable frameworks of meaning. Consequently, existential imperatives
explicitly highlight the phenomenon of retrospective sensemaking, as described by for
instance Schütz (1967) and Weick (1995). As demonstrated above, the process of
retrospective sensemaking suggests that individuals consciously or unconsciously construct
and attach meaning to events after they have occurred. In theoretical terms, this meaning
framework is further reflected in Slavoj Žižek’s Hegelian-dialectical notion of loss, which
makes a similar point that also resonates with the phenomenon of existential imperatives.
Žižek argues in a dialectical fashion that it is through the process of loss and change that we
become specifically aware of what it is that has been lost or changed (Žižek, 2017). Within
the context of everyday experiences and ordinary language use, perhaps this is what we refer
to when we say or think “I did not really know what I had until I lost it”, referring to the
notion that the meaning of that which is lost becomes evident first when it is no longer within
our grasp.

Existential imperatives not only present the subject with a novel position in life for
retrospectively making sense of experiences that have occurred in the past (e.g. making sense
of what working for a wage has meant to them in their lives). Life transitions in the form of
existential imperatives also introduce an openness toward the future and its potentials in terms
of actions, events, experiences, and so on (see e.g. Heidegger, 2013; Jackson, 2005; Jackson,
2013). Within this temporal framework of meaning construction and a novel openness toward
the future, it makes sense for a person who is approaching or have recently entered retirement
or some other novel life situation (e.g. unemployment) to ask herself “What will become of

17
me and my life when I am not working anymore?”, “How will my social life be affected by
this?; Who am I and who will I become?; What is my present and future role in society?”.
Consequently, the temporal awareness and openness toward the future introduced by
existential imperatives and their consequences for existential meaning-making, may introduce
a shift in the self- and identity narratives individuals construct about who they are in the
present and what role they have in the world. The following statement from an unemployed
45-year-old construction worker captured in Terkel’s (1972) book “Working” reflects this
phenomenon:

Right now I can’t really describe myself because . . . I’m unemployed. . . . So, you see, I
can’t say who I am right now. . . . I guess a man’s something else besides his work, isn’t
he? But what? I just don’t know’ (Anonymous construction worker, in Terkel, 1972).

Examples of other potential major existential imperatives are: becoming economically

independent, becoming terminally ill, suddenly recovering from a serious illness, going
through a divorce, losing a loved one, falling in love, breaking with or adopting a religious
belief or ideology, and so on. At worst, in the wake of experiencing a major existential
imperative, people may experience a “meaning vacuum”. This transitional phenomenon is
characterized by a period where the individual experiences “emptiness, ambiguity, emotional
confusion, and other signs of a lack of meaning” (Baumeister, 1991: 312). Conversely, on a
more positive note, other forms of existential imperatives may introduce novel sources of
meaningfulness. For example, it is argued that although becoming a parent may not
necessarily be linked to increased happiness (ibid.: 394), it represents a life turning point that
is likely to “increase the amount of meaning in a person’s life” (ibid.: 313). Since the major
existential imperative in the form of transitioning from full time employment to a life in
retirement represents a definite temporal-structural change and rupture in the primary routines
of an individual’s life, an existential imperative in this context is typically associated with a
significant (re)negotiation and redefining of the existential meaning-frameworks of one’s life
(Bengtsson, Flisbäck & Lund, 2017; Bengtsson & Flisbäck, 2016.

The definition of the above addressed major and definite forms of existential imperatives
introduce interesting opportunities in terms of whether there are also other forms life events
and turning points that may catalyze individuals into reflecting about meaning, albeit of lesser
magnitudes than major existential imperatives and in a more temporary manner. Given the
supposedly distinct split 8 between “work” and the rest of “life” and thus between meaning-
making during leisure activities and work activities, as it is suggested in the strictly
dichotomized “work-life balance” construct (Kalliath & Brough, 2008; Gambles, Rapoport &
Lewis, 2007), one could argue that there are other forms of existential imperatives that may
have similar but not necessarily as dramatic effects on individuals’ negotiation and redefining
of the meanings of work. Additionally, the phenomenological account of temporality and its
significance for experience and construction of meaning further aids the idea that existential
imperatives may also occur episodically and in lesser magnitude than for example major
8
In relation to the work/life balance idea of a distinct split between meaning in “work” and meaning during
“the rest of life”, some individuals tend to invoke the leisure argument. The leisure argument suggests that no
matter how degrading, alienating, dehumanizing, or meaningless working might be experienced by employees,
“the opportunities for self-expression and creativity denied by modern technology and bureaucracy can be
found again in the freely chosen pursuits of leisure time” (Blauner, 1969: 183). A problem with this argument is
that it neglects existential aspects of working in the sense that it “underestimates the fact that work remains
the single most important life activity for most people, in terms of time and energy, and ignores the subtle
ways in which one’s work life affects the quality of one’s leisure, family relations, and basic self-feelings” (ibid.:
183-184).

18
imperatives in the form of transition to retirement (Bengtsson et al., 2017). Some argue that
this is the case. Within this framework, it is suggested that the transition from for instance
work to weekends and holidays/vacation 9 leave represent minor and episodic existential
imperatives. This is because such imperatives are associated with an oscillation between
certain existential moods, which are consequences of ongoing social, structural and temporal
changes and ruptures that occur in everyday routines and experiences that are structured by
paid work (ibid.). Consequently, given the central role of temporality and relational processes
in meaning construction, I argue that when exploring the existential meanings of working for
a wage it is relevant to focus not only on major and definite existential imperatives (e.g.
transition to retirement), but to also address minor and episodic existential imperatives in the
form of temporary transitions (e.g. from work to vacation leave). For instance, how do people
experience the significance and value of their job when they are approaching
holidays/weekends/vacation leave, or conversely, when a period of non-work is approaching
an end? What do people think and how do they feel about the meaning of their occupational
lives during such minor existential imperatives?

Concluding Remarks

My basic argument in this paper has been that in order to generate a more holistic and deeper
understanding of the experienced purposive meanings of working for a wage, meaning of
work scholars may benefit from adopting a relational and phenomenological understanding
of meaning that recognizes the centrality of temporality in meaning construction. According
to the phenomenological understanding of meaning proposed in this paper, this can be done
for example by exploring how persons think, reason, and feel about the meaning of their jobs
in relation to major and minor existential imperatives. In methodological terms, when
performing interviews with presently or previously employed persons, this means asking
participants how they feel, think, and reason about the meanings of their working lives in
relation to different forms of major and minor turning points in life, such as for instance
transition to retirement, parental leave, sick leave, unemployment, vacation leave, and
weekends. In my estimation, this approach may enable generation of deeper insight into the
existential meanings of working for a wage.

In terms of the methodological application of the conceptual model of meaning proposed in

this paper, in my dissertation project, I am exploring the experienced situated (meaning in the
workplace) and existential meanings (meaning in life) of working for a wage. As a theoretical
framework I am partially departing from the present paper’s proposed phenomenological
understanding of meaning and meaning construction, specifically the ideas regarding
existential imperatives and their relation to meaning construction in relation to working life.
With regards to collection of empirical materials, I am in the midst of conducting face-to-face
phenomenological narrative interviews with presently employed and recently retired
individuals from a diverse set of occupations. In order to illustrate what kinds of meaning of
work narratives interviews focusing on existential imperatives may generate, the following
quotes from participants may give some insight to the potential relevance the proposed
conceptual approach and its methodological application in qualitative interviews:

9
With regards to the potential prevalence of minor existential imperatives, it is relevant highlighting that in
Sweden, returning back to work after vacation leave is associated with wanting to change jobs. According to a
recent survey, approximately 40 per cent of the Swedish workforce report that they have begun to consider
changing jobs when they are on vacation (Delaryd, 2019).

19
 I haven’t really found my place in life, I don’t know what I want to do with my life, I
don’t know what the future holds. I don’t know what I want my future to hold. Well,
that’s why I’m working so extremely much right now. I do 55-60 hours per week in five
days. (---) After three weeks of vacation the abstinence to go back to work sets in, the last
week of vacation was obnoxious to spend at home not working (laughs). (Karl, truck
driver)

I do not like retirement life, absolutely not. I don’t really like being at home that much. I
become restless. I want to occupy myself with something. (Simone, recently retired
employment officer)

I am retiring next fall. I am afraid of having nothing to do during the winter season. I am
scared to death of becoming inactive. No. I do not want that. Because I look at my sister,
and no thank you. No, no (shakes head). (Rosa, employment consultant, retiring in 9
months)

Well, my children will always come in the first place. And then, in my head, on second
place comes work, because I am like a work ant, I need to work… otherwise… (long
silence) well otherwise I might just as well drop dead. (Josef, group manager)

Based on the arguments proposed in this paper, a phenomenological and relational

understanding of the meaning of working for a wage opens up novel possibilities for
exploring the meaning of work not only from the perspective of the workplace, but also from
an existential-sociological perspective which recognizes the total context of experience by
connecting working to life outside of work through including the role of temporality in
meaning construction. Consequently, this approach does not confine the meaning of work to
the workplace, but recognizes that

“Work can only have meaning in its fundamental sense when it is regarded not just as a
dimension of the employing institution but also as part of an individual life and of our
collective lives. As meaning can only be understood from beyond the frame of life, the
meaning of work has to be qualified by the fact of human mortality.” (Sievers, 1986: 346-
347)

20
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