Can meaning make cents? Making the meaning of work salient for US Manufacturing workers

Salamone, Alberto and Lordan, Grace (2022) Can meaning make cents? Making the meaning of work salient for US Manufacturing workers. . London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK.

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Abstract

We conducted a field experiment in a small electronics manufacturing firm in the US with the specific aim to improve minutes worked, punctuality, tardiness and safety checks. Our intervention was to put posters on the production floor on a random day, which made salient to the blue-collar employees the meaning and importance of their job, which comprised of routine repetitive tasks, in a before and after design. Overall, the intervention was a success with positive and significant effects consistently found for the outcomes both immediately after the experiment finished (+3 days) and also more than two weeks after (+15 days). Our study highlights it is possible to motivate blue collar manual workers intrinsically by drawing attention to the meaning of their work.

Item Type:	Monograph (Working Paper)
Additional Information:	© 2022 The Authors
Divisions:	Psychological and Behavioural Science
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology
Date Deposited:	31 Mar 2022 07:51
Last Modified:	14 Sep 2024 04:16
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/114540

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