Creating Meaningfulness in Public Service Work: A Qualitative Comparative Analysis of Public and Nonprofit Managers’ Experience of Work

• Author: Billie Sandberg,Robbie W. Robichau
• Published date: 01 February 2022
• Date: 01 February 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/02750740211050363
• Subject Matter: Articles

Creating Meaningfulness in Public

Service Work: A Qualitative Comparative

Analysis of Public and Nonprofit

Managers’Experience of Work

Robbie W. Robichau

1

and Billie Sandberg

2

Abstract

Public service work and public-serving institutions are evolving by incorporating neoliberal modes of working more and more.

Contemporary research oftentimes neglects to account for these changes in how we understand public service work, how-

ever. This article draws on the meaningfulness in work and public service motivation literature to explore how public service

workers are making sense of their work and work environments to create meaningful work experiences under evolving con-

ditions. The findings from 45 interviews with public and nonprofit managers are presented and compared. The changing world

of work has implications for how public and nonprofit workers narrate and find meaningfulness in work but not what they find

meaningful about their work. The findings suggest that both public and nonprofit workers create positive meaningfulness in

work but in dissimilar ways. The findings also suggest that organizational leaders play a substantial part in workers’meaning-

fulness-making process. The findings hold theoretical and practical implications for understanding the role workplaces and

organizational leaders play in workers’experience of meaningful public service work.

Keywords

meaningfulness, public service motivation, neoliberal, nonprofit, work

Introduction

Public service workers are oftentimes viewed as different

from their for-profit counterparts (Holt, 2018; Ritz et al.,

2016). More pointedly, individuals who choose to work in

public and nonprofit organizations despite low pay and

long hours have been viewed as distinctive among all

workers in that they are driven in work by a commitment

to service and a desire to be part of something larger than

themselves (Perry et al., 2010). Numerous studies support

this perspective: the workers who populate public and non-

profit organizations are indeed different in the values they

bring to work and in the sense of meaning they draw from

work (e.g., Light, 2002; Ritz et al., 2016; Schott et al.,

2015). Scholars have sought to understand why public

service workers are unique in their work motivations. The

result has been a robust scholarship that spans public admin-

istration and nonprofit studies and includes literature on

Public Service Motivation (PSM) (e.g., Cunningham, 2010;

Lapworth et al., 2018; Perry et al., 2010; Word &

Carpenter, 2013), callings in work (e.g., Schabram &

Maitlis, 2017; Thompson & Christensen, 2018), and a volun-

tary sector ethos (Cunningham, 2010). Collectively, this

body of work sheds substantial light on the factors that con-

tribute to one’s choice of public service work.

Yet, such scholarship often neglects to follow public

service workers into their organizations to investigate their

experiences of work, leaving us with an incomplete picture

of public service work and workers. We understand why

someone might be motivated to seek out public service

work, but we understand little about how those motivations

(and the values that inform them) play out for workers as

they engage in work in public and nonprofit organizations.

This line of inquiry is worth pursuing for two reasons.

First, recent studies suggest that public service workers expe-

rience decreased satisfaction in their work long term

(Moynihan & Pandey, 2007) and are at risk of burnout

(Bakker, 2015). Second (and perhaps relatedly), the nature

1

Bush School of Government & Public Service, Texas A&M University,

College Station, TX, USA

2

Department of Public Administration, Hatfield School of Government,

Portland State University, Portland, OR, USA

Corresponding Author:

Robbie W. Robichau, Bush School of Government & Public Service, Texas

A&M University, 4220 TAMU, College Station, TX 77843, USA.

Email: rrobichau@tamu.edu

Article

American Review of Public Administration

2022, Vol. 52(2) 122–138

© The Author(s) 2021

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/02750740211050363

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of public service work is changing. Public and nonprofit

organizations are becoming increasingly neoliberal by

assuming, in some measure, the values and practices associ-

ated with New Public Management (NPM) (Kaboolian,

1998; Peters & Pierre, 2016), managerialism (Hvenmark,

2016), and marketization (Eikenberry & Kluver, 2004).

Such that these organizations are more competitive, data-

driven, and performance minded (Sandberg et al., 2020;

Terry, 1998). Studies indicate that this evolving work envi-

ronment can negatively impact public service workers and

their experience of work (Catlaw & Marshall, 2018;

Dempsey & Sanders, 2010; Petersen & Willig, 2013).

Considering this, it is difficult to presume that service-

minded individuals will continue to seek to enact their

values through paid work in public and nonprofit organiza-

tions and that these organizations will further motivate

them to perform public service work. Rather, this state of

affairs invites us to further examine the role the contemporary

public service workplace plays in shaping workers’experi-

ence of work.

This article takes up this invitation by exploring how

public service managers make sense of their work and their

work environments. Specifically, this article examines

public service managers’meaningfulness-making process

(Vuori et al., 2012)—the process by which workers make

sense of their work and work environments to make their

work meaningful. Finding meaningfulness in work, while

subjective and innate to individual experiences, is fostered

or discouraged by organizational settings and management

(Bailey et al., 2017; Lips-Wiersma & Morris, 2009). Here,

the influence of neoliberal modes of working on managers’

meaningfulness-making process is explicitly accounted for.

This article contributes to the literature by shedding light

on how public and nonprofit managers narrate and craft

meaningfulness in public service work during a neoliberal

age.

The article unfolds as follows. First, the article discusses

the meaningfulness in work literature and compares it with

the public and nonprofit motivation-related literatures.

Then, the article provides an overview of the neoliberal

workplace and how it relates to contemporary public

service workplaces. Next, the article outlines the study’s

methods and data. The article then presents findings from

interviews with 45 public and nonprofit managers across

the United States. The article concludes by discussing the

findings in relation to the literature on meaningfulness in

work, neoliberalism, and public and nonprofit work motiva-

tion and by discussing the study’s implications for under-

standing public service work theoretically and practically.

Meaningfulness in Work

The scholarship on meaningfulness in work explores the sig-

nificance of work for individuals’sense of meaningfulness

while underscoring the ongoing relationship between the

worker, the worker’s work environment, and one’s experi-

ence of meaningfulness. Researchers and practitioners alike

have a growing interest in exploring and capitalizing on

how workers’ability to find meaningfulness in work leads

to positive individual and organizational outcomes, ranging

from improved worker well-being, job satisfaction, retention,

and productivity (Bailey et al., 2017; Lips-Wiersma &

Morris, 2009; Rosso et al., 2010). Meaningfulness in work

refers to the “amount of perceived or felt significance

[work] holds for an individual”and its “positive valence”

cognitively and affectively (Rosso et al., 2010, p. 95; see

also Wrzesnieski et al., 1997). In their comprehensive

review of the literature, Rosso et al. (2010) find four

primary sources of individual’s meaningfulness in work:

(a) personal values, motivations, and beliefs; (b) relationships

with others; (c) the organizational, personal, and cultural

context of work environment in which the work takes

place; and, (d) a belief-orientated connection to divine guid-

ance. Meaningfulness involves significance but not necessar-

ily positivity. People may view negative or traumatic work

experiences as meaningful: wellsprings of the person they

are today. Workers make sense of both positive and negative

experiences in their work so that they construct meaningful-

ness in work for themselves (Vuori et al., 2012).

In making sense of their work and work environments,

workers draw upon the four central sources of meaningful-

ness (i.e., the self, others, work context, and spirituality)

and relate their experiences of work to them. Moreover,

they emphasize their contributions to their organization’s

mission as well as the benefits they receive from their

work, to create positive order and cognitive harmony

(Vuori et al., 2012). Meaningful work, therefore, is not guar-

anteed by the type of work alone, rather it is created through

one’s relationship with work (Wrzensiewki & Dutton, 2001).

According to Vuori and colleagues (2012), workers actively

engage in both sensemaking and crafting of their work and its

context as part of a dynamic meaningfulness-making process.

Aiming to make sense of work, individuals extract and inter-

pret cues to understand “what is going on”and “what should I

do now”(p. 234). These “cues”are interpreted positively

(e.g., I am making an effective contribution and personally

benefiting or feeling pleasure from the work) or negatively

(e.g., I am not making an effective contribution nor benefiting

or feeling pleasure from the work). Worker who more posi-

tively interprets work cues experiences higher levels of

meaningfulness. In contrast, workers with more negative

interpretations of work cues may find their work as meaning-

less, nothing more than a means to an end (Vuori et al.,

2012).

Regardless of whether one has a generally meaningful or

meaningless experience of work, all workers engage in job

crafting: “the actions employees take to shape, mold, and

redefine their jobs”physically, relationally, and cognitively

(Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001, p. 180) to change their

work situation to enhance their experience of meaningfulness

Robichau and Sandberg 123