Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
51,253
result(s) for
"Meaning"
Sort by:
Searching for meaning in a disruptive world – Constructing a lexicon of the meanings of meaning
Orientation: Meaning is not a concept whose significance needs to be debated anymore. Rather, the meaning of meaning is a concept that needs more clarity to improve its understanding.Research purpose: In this paper, the construct of meaning is deconstructed to develop a lexicon of the respective meanings of meaning, especially as they apply to the domain of work.Motivation for the study: Descriptions of the various meanings of meaning tend to be lost across many different journal articles and books. More clarity regarding the meanings of meaning and how they compare and relate with each other is essential to promote valid research and influential practice in this field.Research approach/design and method: Theoretical research is conducted through a literature study and the meanings of meaning are determined through theory synthesis and topical analyses.Main findings: Meaning is a multidimensional construct, especially as it applies to the work context. The concept of meaning in life is distinct and should be distinguished from related concepts, such as the meaning of work, meaning at work, meaning in work, and meaningful work.Practical/managerial implications: By clarifying meanings of meaning, the lexicon provides a unique reference work for scholars, and an essential guide for practitioners in the fields of psychology, industrial and organisational psychology, and even psychiatry, who aspire to advance and promote meaningfulness in their work contexts.Contribution/value-add: As far as could be established, this is the first lexicon of the meanings of meaning in one easy-to-use compendium, for accurate comparison and reference.
Journal Article
Recent work on the meaning of “life’s meaning”: Should we change the philosophical discourse?
In this article I critically discuss English-speaking philosophical literature addressing the question of what it essentially means to speak of “life’s meaning”. Instead of considering what might in fact confer meaning on life, I make two claims about the more abstract, meta-ethical question of how to understand what by definition is involved in making that sort of enquiry. One of my claims is that over the past five years there has been a noticeable trend among philosophers to try to change our understanding of what talk of “life’s meaning” connotes. For example, whereas most philosophers for a long while had held that such talk is about a kind of value possible in the life of human beings, recently some have argued that certain non-human parts of nature can exhibit meaningfulness, which, furthermore, is not necessarily something valuable. The second claim I advance is that there is strong reason to reject this trend, and instead for philosophers to retain the long-standing approach.
Journal Article
A Normative Meaning of Meaningful Work
Research on meaningful work has not embraced a shared definition of what it is, in part because many researchers and laypersons agree that it means different things to different people. However, subjective and social accounts of meaningful work have limited practical value to help people pursue it and to help scholars study it. The account of meaningful work advanced in this paper is inherently normative. It recognizes the relevance of subjective experience and social agreement to appraisals of meaningfulness but considers them conceptually incomplete and practically limited. According to this normative account, meaningful work should be meaningful to oneself and to others and is also meaningful independent of them. It sets forth grounds for evaluating some work to be more meaningful than other work, asserting the possibility that one could be mistaken about the meaningfulness of one's work. While it thus proscribes some claims to meaningful work, it also opens up potential new avenues of inquiry into, among other things, self-aggrandizing and harmful work that is experienced as meaningful, morally valuable work that is not experienced as meaningful, and the distinction between experienced and normative meaningfulness.
Journal Article
Individualism vs. collectivism: influences on attitudes in china toward the search for meaning in life
Which value-related perspective better aligns with the search for meaning: individualism or collectivism? We explored the impact of group individualism or collectivism and attitude toward meaning on the relationship between the
search
for and the
presence
of meaning among individuals. Thus, three studies were conducted: one correlation study and two behavioral experiments. In Study 1, 638 Chinese participants completed questionnaires on meaning in life, horizontal and vertical individualism and collectivism, and attitude toward meaning. Attitude toward meaning had some effect on the relationship between meaning searching and meaning presence among individualistic group members and a significant moderating effect among collectivistic group members. Next, to clarify the role of attitudes in this relationship, Study 2 (
N
= 180) compared individual attitudes toward
meaning-seeking
and
meaning-existing
stories, revealing that the Chinese participants had a more positive attitude toward the latter. In Study 3 (
N
= 499) we further compared the attitudes of participants in the individualist and collectivist groups toward stories of
not searching
,
meaning-seeking failure
,
meaning-seeking success
, and the
ongoing search for meaning after finding it
. The results showed that participants in the individualist group had a more positive attitude toward not searching for meaning, while those in the collectivist group endorsed meaning-seeking and continued search for meaning after finding it. These results illustrate for the first time that the attitude toward the search for meaning is affected not only by a collectivist or individualist country’s mainstream culture but also by each person’s preference for individualist or collectivist values.
Journal Article
The limits of meaning: Social indexicality, variation, and the cline of interiority
The structural focus of linguistics has led to a static and modular treatment of meaning. Viewing language as practice allows us to transcend the boundaries of subdisciplines that deal with meaning and to integrate the social indexicality of variation into this larger system. This article presents the expression of social meaning as a continuum of decreasing reference and increasing performativity, with sociolinguistic variation at the performative extreme. The meaning potential of sociolinguistic variables in turn is based in their form and their social source, constituting a cline of ‘interiority’ from variables that index public social facts about the speaker to more internal, personal affective states.
Journal Article