The role of developmental networks in career starters' meaning of work

This study examined how career starters (age: 26-33 years) experience work meaning and how their developmental network influences this sense of work meaning. Accordingly, we interviewed 16 career starters about how they sense purpose, values, self-efficacy, and positive self-worth in their work. Moreover, they shared how both work and non-work developers influence these work meaning processes. This study contributes to the discussion on how meaning of work contributes to “the good life” in two ways. First, this study contributes to the definition of the phenomenon of meaningful work, by exploring how the four basic human needs of Baumeister (1999) are translated into career starter’s work context. Next, we show how both work and non-work developers act as co-scripters of these processes. Career starters identified the importance of their developers’ need-supportive functions to their sense of work meaning, including (anti-) role modeling, provision of objectivity (purpose), forming communities to share values with (values), supporting the development of personal competencies (self-efficacy), benchmarking, and creating possibilities to express emotions (self-worth). In the discussion section, we highlight several questions that arise from this study.