Meaning, Mission, and Measurement: How Organizational Performance Measurement Shapes Perceptions of Work as Worthy

A compelling organizational mission can contribute to employees’ sense of work as worthy and thereby meaningful. Yet realizing this potential depends on whether how the is conveyed employees connected their day-to-day work, with performance measurement practices playing a critical but poorly understood role. To develop empirically grounded insights into shape individuals’ perceptions worthy, we leverage qualitative, inductive study two UK social enterprises. We find that encounters both affirm challenge by influencing accomplish tasks, see impact have credible valued voice in interpersonal interactions. Building these findings, model theorizes practical, existential, relational pathways through which create ongoing expansions contractions worthiness. Taken together, our findings broaden understandings sources processes meaningful dynamic conception meaningfulness, point toward more agentic view processes.