I Mean, Define Meaningful! Restaurants, Employees, and Meaningful Lives

• In Event: 606 - Section on Social Psychology Roundtable Session (co-sponsored with Section on Sociology of Emotions)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 11. Organizational Behavior

Abstract

This study addresses the complex subject of what constitutes “meaningful” lives. In this paper, I examine how restaurant employees describe meaningfulness in and around their workplaces. Moreover, I investigate how the construction of meaning has the potential to contribute to and diminish the restaurant workers’ positive self-concepts. Their accounts reveal five categories of meaningfulness: helping, mentoring, expanding, belonging, and supplementation. Regardless of popular opinions about restaurant work, the data show that the employees designate their lives as meaningful while working in restaurants. This research provides insight into why and how workers have meaningfulness in jobs that many people consider meaningless.

Author

• Amanda Michiko Shigihara, State University of New York-Old Westbury