Meaning Making in the Building Business: The Cognitive and Behavioral Processes Architects Use to Ma

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Meaning Making in the Building Business The
Cognitive and Behavioral Processes Architects Use
to Make their Work Meaningful

• Heather Vough
• University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
• Department of Business Administration
• 3/31/2007

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Roadmap

• Research Questions and Definitions
• Meaning of work, meaningful work, etc
• Previous Literature
• Methodology
• Qualitative Case study of an Architecture firm
• Findings!!!
• Discussion and Implications

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Research Questions

• General (dissertation)
• How does the meaning employees find in their work
  change over their careers?
• What are the antecedent conditions and
  consequences of a change of meaning of work?
• Focus (presentation)
• Day to day meaning making- What processes do
  employees use to experience meaningful work?
• How you can help
• Any relevant research that you have done or you
  are aware of
• Any alternate explanations, storylines,
  reinterpretations, avenues to explore, different
  classifications, etc.

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Defining meaning of work

• Experienced Meaning of work is employees
  overall understandings of the degree to which
  they are able to connect their self-concepts to
  the workplace and the evaluations associated
  with these connections (Vough, working paper)
• Self-concept consists of identities and
  self-esteem (Gecas,1982)
• Composed of targets and states
• Work is meaningful when it is perceived to be
  purposeful and significant (Pratt Ashforth,
  2003)
• Perceived connection between self and workplace

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Meaning Targets and States

• Targets (the content of meaning) tasks, task
  outcomes, and social interactions
• States

Relevance of target to self-concept High
Low
Perceived Resources For Connection Low High
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Previous Related Processes

• How employees deal with stigmatized jobs
  (Ashforth Kreiner, 1999)
• Reframing- transforming meaning attached to the
  profession
• Recalibrating- adjusting standards of a
  professional attribute
• Refocusing- shifting focus away from stigmatized
  aspect of job
• How medical residents cope with identity
  violations (Pratt, Rockmann, Kauffman, 2006)
• Enriching- deepened understanding of their
  professional identity
• Patching- attaching current identity to
  pre-existing notions of identity
• Splinting- using previous identity until current
  identity was strong enough to adopt
• How employees actively shape their tasks and
  relationships (Wrzesniewski Dutton, 2001)
• Behavioral crafting- changing the boundaries of
  the task
• Relational crafting- changing quality or amount
  of interaction with others
• Cognitive crafting- changing how the task is
  perceived

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Methodology

• Qualitative Case Study of an Architecture Firm
  (Yin, 1989)
• Grounded theory- Iterative process of moving
  between data collection and analysis (Glaser
  Strauss, 1967)
• Methods Interviews, Observation, Archives
• 3 rounds of one-on-one semi-structured interviews
• Online Reports
• Monthly online answers to meaning related
  questions
• Observed meetings
• Collected organizational documents
• Shadowing

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Setting and Informants

• ABS (art, business, science) large firm- 5
  offices internationally located
• Study performed within headquarters (around 200
  employees)
• 3 practice groups (education, healthcare,
  hospitality)
• 31 Informants
• Informants spanned from CEO to new interns
• 16 were licensed, 15 were not
• 8 female, 23 male
• 6 left firm or were reassigned during study

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Informant Distribution
Principals/SVP Licensed/VPs Associates
Healthcare Education Hospitality
Not including 2 senior managers not affiliated
with any practice group
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Methodology Data Analysis

• Transcribed Verbatim
• Interview Summaries (Miles Huberman, 1984)
• Initial coding
• Provisional (e.g. social interactions or
  meaninglessness)
• Open coding (e.g. learning or mentoring)
• Secondary Coding
• Axial- patterns of codes grouped together
• Narratives constructed after second interview
  using all data

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Findings Meaning Model

• Antecedents
• Individual
• Process or end focused
• Personal or social focused
• Self-esteem/confidence
• Understanding of
• profession/firm
• Appropriate
• Training
• Experience
• Task
• Project type
• Project phase
• Comprehension of involvement
• Opportunity for self-expression
• Creative opportunity
• Problem-solving
• Learning/growth/challenge

Meaningfulness

• Sense of self
• Sense of Competence
• Sense of Contribution
• Project
• Others

• Self-Engagement
• Ownership
• Accomplishment
• Emotional
• investment

Meaning-Making Processes

• Outcomes
• Performance
• Motivation
• Satisfaction

Bold job characteristics model
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Findings Meaning- Making Processes

• Meaning Making
• Substituting- replacing one meaning with another
• Lateral
• External
• Temporal
• Expanding- looking at tasks from different
  perspective
• Enabling- reorganizing relationship to task
• Goal creating
• Voicing
• Turning over

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Findings Substituting

• Substituting Processes- replacing one meaning
  with another
• Lateral- make up for missing connection with
  something else in work
• I want to make an impact. And maybe if I
  didnt get the opportunity, I would have to
  reevaluate. Maybe this impact could be done other
  ways. Just like helping other people around me.
  You know, theres meaning in that. I guess I
  would just have to reevaluate, how can I achieve
  this impact on other folks? (Senior Associate
  18, 1).
• (Informant position, identifying number, wave
  of data collection)

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Substituting Examples

• External- replacing missing meaning with similar
  meaning outside of work
• I also do a lot of side work too. I do pro bono
  work for the citys public schools. This I do
  on my own. ABS really doesnt know about it. I do
  that on my own to just kind of stimulate my own
  need for designing and being creative on a
  different level (Associate 20, 1).
• Temporal- look for something you do not have now
  in future
• Ive done housing and stuff like that, but I
  wasnt exposed to big commercial jobs and stuff
  like that. I looked at it as an opportunity to
  just learn look at other peoples drawings and
  just sort of be a sponge for a while (Senior
  Vice President 22, 1).

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Findings Expanding

• Expanding Processes- employees look beyond
  immediate task for meaning (i.e. to be able to
  put things into a larger context such as how each
  part fits into the greater whole)
• You know I think most of the time youre
  focusing on the task that you have to do today.
  ..You kind of have to focus yourself on the big
  picture from time to time cause you can lose
  track of that (Vice President 60, 2).
• Theres obviously times when you know you kind
  of wonder- Why am I doing this? Why am I doing
  this? But I think the big picture is just the
  outcome that you see at the end. I think its just
  like with anything, theres obviously some joy
  when you see the building get built and the
  people come to use it for what it was intended to
  be (Senior Associate 11, 1).

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Findings Enabling

• Enabling Processes- changing your perspective on
  the task
• Goal Creating- set objective and performance
  criteria in order to make work more meaningful
• (referring to times when he is assigned a dumb
  task) Meaningful work would be if someoned give
  me a task or job whatever and I was able to
  accomplish it in even faster record time than I
  had before (Associate 87, 2).
• (discussing copies he had made for a
  presentation) It was very important to me
  that, well I guess pride had to do with it. I
  take a lot of pride in making sure that things
  are done right (Senior Associate 18, 1).

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Enabling Examples

• Voicing- talking with management about how to get
  desired opportunities
• Your destiny is whatever you choose it to be. If
  I knew that I would have to stay and build condos
  for like the next five years, Id obviously speak
  up about it. I would speak up about it. And
  theyre very accommodating here too (Intern 68,
  1).
• Turning over- leaving firm in order to get
  desired opportunities
• (discussing being given secretarial tasks to
  do) When it goes on and on and on and youre
  never learning anything, you know how are you
  ever supposed to do what they need you to do? So
  if I see something like that emerging, Ill kind
  of like go have a talk with management and give
  them a chance to do something else. And if it
  doesnt happen, then I usually move on
  (Associate 25, 1). And she did

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Meaning neutral processes

• Process that did not increase or decrease the
  amount of meaningfulness in work
• Avoiding- actively avoid doing tasks and being
  put in situations that are not valued
• Im good at it, but I dont like it. So I
  delegate management. Ill pick the most capable
  management person on my team and have them do the
  managementbut Ill set it up and Ill run away
  from the vicious bunny (Principal 23, 1).
• Assessing- figuring out strengths and weaknesses
  to proceed
• Just recently Ive gone through my own
  personal exercise of figuring out these strengths
  I have and maybe I can use them. Thats just my
  confidence. If I know Im really good at
  something, and it doesnt happen to be nuts and
  bolts, then maybe thats okay. I can use those to
  find that niche. So yeah, Im getting there. Ive
  just got to figure it out, Ive got to write them
  down, evaluate (Senior Associate 18, 2).

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Meaning Losing Processes

• Accepting- recognizing that current situation is
  characteristics of profession/firm
• I think its a slow realitization that is
  probably a combination of age and maturity and
  not one specific thing other than at some point
  recognizing I had a lousy day today, I really
  hated it. And other days its hey I had fun today
  you know, I enjoyed what I was doing today. Its
  just balancing those two I think. its just
  something you have to come to terms with, in
  terms of theres always going to be days where
  you love what youre doing, theres always days
  when youll hate it (Senior Vice President 30,
  3).
• Knowing that youve been through that before,
  you know. And it always comes back up. . . I
  think that you just know that theres going to be
  sort of the up and down knowing that youve been
  through those sort of lulls and ups, knowing that
  ultimately something is going to get you going
  again. Pretty normal human nature I think, to get
  into a duldrum (Senior Vice President 22, 1).

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Meaning Losing Processes

• Obligating- doing work not because it is related
  to self but because others expect it
• You gotta do it, I mean its still a job. You
  gotta do what you gotta do. Make it the best you
  can. Youve gotta struggle sometimes (Principal
  23, 3).
• Interviewer Can you describe a time when you
  thought your work was pointless? Less significant
  to you?
• Informant Yeah I guess when youre doing work
  for someone else that you know they havent
  really thought out any of the consequences of why
  theyve asked you to do a particular thing and
  you do it anyways because they are your boss or
  whatever and you just do it because you have to
  (Associate 86, 1).

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Meaning Losing Processes

• Minimizing- decrease of the importance placed on
  work in general
• Interviewer Have you ever had to struggle to
  figure out how your work had meaning to you?
• Informant Maybe. And maybe those are the times
  where I just tell myself this is a job, its a
  job. Just like anything else is a job (Associate
  86, 3).
• Part of me is actually thinking how architecture
  fits into my life is maybe not a big part of it,
  as it is now. Im getting to the point now where
  I think I could make that decision (Associate
  33, 3).

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Meaning Losing Processes

• Suppressing- distance self from aspects of work
  that are unavailable
• There are projects that I will certainly try to
  do good work on but I will not be emotionally
  invested in them because I know theres a
  dissatisfaction quotient out there, either in the
  manager or something else (Principal 23, 1).
• I dont know if you ever look at banks, but
  Harris banks are really cool. Id love to do
  that, and do that whole idea of a bank to a
  medical office building. But I dont think this
  client would do that so Im not really worried
  about it cause I dont think Im going to be able
  to go that way (Associate 87, 1).

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Summary

• Meaningfulness arises from feeling good about the
  work that you do and from feeling that your work
  matters to the project or other people.
• Employees use cognitive and behavioral processes
  to experience their work as meaningful.
• There are sometimes obstacles that prevent the
  experience of meaningful work. Employees use
  certain processes to deal with this as well.

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Still to come

• Social aspects of meaning
• Role of social interactions/relationships as
  source of meaningfulness
• Role of social cues as antecedents/ influencers
  of meaning
• Role of social comparisons
• Meaning escalation/meaning as a moving target
• Networks of meaning- interconnectedness of
  sources of meaning

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Discussion/Implications

• A greater understanding of the how? of meaning
  making (and losing)
• Employees actively find ways to make work
  meaningful
• Meaning making is not something that is done to a
  person
• Integrates some of the meaning of work,
  motivation and work design literature
• Meaning is a dynamic and on-going process, best
  understood as it unfolds.
• It may be just as important for managers to help
  employees reframe how they view their work as it
  is to actually change the nature of the work.

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• Questions?

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Meaning of Work Defined

• - Number of meaningful targets
• - Relative weight of meaningful
• targets
• - Number of alienated targets

Self-concept
Self-Esteem
Identities
Overall Experience of Meaning of Work
States of Meaning
Meaningfulness
Alienation
Indifference
Targets of Meaning
Meaninglessness
Tasks
Task Outcomes
Social Environment