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. PLOS ONE, 17 (7). ISSN 1932-6203

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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:	Article
Official URL:	https://journals.plos.org/plosone/
Additional Information:	© 2022 The Authors
Divisions:	Psychological and Behavioural Science
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > HD28 Management. Industrial Management B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology
Date Deposited:	12 Jul 2022 09:00
Last Modified:	08 Apr 2024 01:48
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/115541

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