Multi-period Impact Of Absence Of Meaning On Task Performance

In modern society,talent competition is increasingly intensified,and the working trend of employees also presents the characteristics of short working hours and high turnover rate.The fundamental reason behind the changes is the shift of work orientation of the new generation of employees.Young people are more likely to regard work as the need of life and society,an ideal way to realize themselves,and a reflection of one's self-worth.As an important aspect of measuring a job,the sense of meaning of work is being paid more and more attention.At present,the researches on the significance of work mainly focus on its influencing factors and outcomes.In terms of the impact of the meaning of work,most of the existing researches focus on the impact on the motivation and performance of people who engaged in the work,but didn't subdivide the dimension of meaning of work and task span.In terms of the impact of the absence of task meaning,a large number of previous studies have shown that it will have a negative impact on employees themselves and their work.However,it is worth noting that there are two sides to the effect,and the experience of absence of meaning can also motivate individuals to make more efforts to compensate in other tasks of different nature.This paper mainly focuses on the social value dimension,and explore the influence of absence of meaning on subsequent tasks of different nature,thus making up for the deficiency of the existing research.In this paper,we explore the multi-period influence of absence of meaning through the combination of laboratory experiment and field experiment.Laboratory experiment investigated whether individuals who experience the loss of meaning in the first task would make more compensatory efforts to meet their inner needs in the next high-meaning task.Field experiment explored whether individuals would invest more in another high-meaning task to satisfy their needs if the previous task had only low meaning.At the same time,this paper focuses on the influence of individual difference,that is,whether the individuals' sense of meaning pursuit will have animpact on their following compensatory efforts.Through the two studies,our basic conclusion is: In working scenario,individual has an internal need for meaning.When it is not well satisfied,if another task just provides an opportunity to make up for it,the individual will restore meaning through compensatory efforts and this effect is mainly reflected in the increase in working hours and the improvement of work quality.In terms of individual difference,due to various factors such as other moderating variables,the impact of individual's sense of meaning pursuit on compensatory behavior is not significant.We also look forward to further research by other scholars in the future.The innovations of this paper are as follows: innovation of research angle and research method,and expansion of research sample.Innovation of research angle refers to that,in the past,individuals were often seen as passive recipients of the effects of meaning.This paper argues that individuals have their demand for meaning of work,so in the face of meaningless situations,they will give full play to their own subjective initiative,and proactively pursue meaning in the alternative areas.In terms of research methods,based on laboratory experiments,this paper also created the scene of low meaning in real classroom through field experiments,and verified the research conclusion.In terms of research sample,this paper expands the group of subjects from college students to high school students,which not only expands the sample range of the study,but also improves the practical value of the research results.The theoretical contributions of this paper are mainly as follows:First of all,this paper studies the multi-period impact of the absence of meaning in the subdivision dimension of work meaning.Previous studies have mostly focused on the impact of the absence of meaning on the the same or similar follow-up tasks.This paper explored the multi-period impact of the absence of work meaning(social value dimension),which makes up for the deficiencies of existing theories.Secondly,based on the multi-period influence of the absence of meaning,the potential psychological mechanism of individuals is revealed.In previous studies on the impact of work meaning or lack of meaning,researchers mostly focused on the impact of the results but did not make in-depth discussions on the reasons behindthem.This study further discusses and explains the effect of the absence of task meaning through the application of compensation theory,and reveals the individual psychological mechanism that forms this result,which provides a new direction for future research.Thirdly,focusing on the absence of meaning,the application range of compensation theory is expanded.According to the meaning-maintenance model,the sense of meaning,as an important psychological need of the individual,will arouse aversion when there is a difference between its actual presentation and the individual's expectation,thus prompting the individual to make compensatory efforts.This paper focuses on the social value dimension of the meaning of work and extends the application scope of the meaning-maintenance model.Through laboratory experiment and field experiment,it is proved that the meaning-maintenance model is widely applicable and capable of explaining individual behaviors after meaning violation,which enriches the connotation of the meaning-maintenance model.