Meaningful work and corporate social responsibility: Examining the interactions of a sense of calling with organizational- and job-level factors

Abstract

Drawing on a multilevel framework of factors fostering meaningful work and the extant Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) literature, we examine the interactions of a sense of calling (an individual-level variable) with contextual factors at the organizational level (i.e. CSR) and job level (i.e. job autonomy and CSR embedded in work). In Study 1, we propose and test a multilevel model on 758 employees in 18 organizations, finding that a sense of calling, interacting with organizational CSR and job autonomy, is positively related to meaningful work. In Study 2, we conduct a scenario-based experiment with 261 participants, finding that the three-way interaction between a sense of calling, CSR at the organizational level and CSR in work is positively related to meaningful work. These results provide important theoretical and practical implications for further studying the interactions of individual-, job- and organizational-level sources of meaningful work and, specifically, unpacking the role of CSR.