“I Only Tell Them the Good Parts:” How Relational Others Influence Paid Careworkers’ Descriptions of Their Work as Meaningful

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dc.contributor.authorMcAllum, Kirstie
dc.contributor.authorElvira MM
dc.contributor.authorVillamor Martin M
dc.date.accessioned2024-09-17T21:37:00Z
dc.date.available2024-09-17T21:37:00Z
dc.date.issued2024
dc.description.abstractThe occupational images associated with paid care work for older adults range from a job carried out by earthly angels to a form of stigmatized dirty work: This ambiguity makes maintaining a committed long-term care workforce challenging. Encouraging careworkers to view their work as meaningful has been touted as a potential solution. Moving beyond a purely subjective approach to meaningfulness, we explore how careworkers construe their work as meaningful and how relational others influence careworkers’ ability to speak about meaningfulness. Others’ messages matter, although their importance depends on relational others’ knowledge of care tasks and involvement in the care relationship. By documenting how others’ accounts both enhance and compromise careworkers’ ability to speak about meaningfulness and moments of meaninglessness, our study identifies sources of meaningfulness for careworkers, a socially essential workforce under-examined by meaningful work research, and extends meaningful work research in contexts where relationships are central to occupational identity.
dc.identifier.citationMcAllum K, Elvira MM, Villamor Martin M (2024). “I Only Tell Them the Good Parts:” How Relational Others Influence Paid Careworkers’ Descriptions of Their Work as Meaningful. Management Communication Quarterly. 38(1). 171-202.
dc.identifier.doihttp://doi.org/10.1177/08933189231180133
dc.identifier.issn0893-3189
dc.identifier.issn1552-6798
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10092/107543
dc.languageen
dc.publisherSAGE Publications
dc.rightshttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.rights.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10092/17651
dc.subjectmeaningful work
dc.subjectmeaningfulness
dc.subjectcare work
dc.subjectcareworkers
dc.subjectrelational others
dc.subject.anzsrc42 - Health sciences::4205 - Nursing::420502 - Aged care nursing
dc.subject.anzsrc35 - Commerce, management, tourism and services::3505 - Human resources and industrial relations::350507 - Workplace wellbeing and quality of working life
dc.title“I Only Tell Them the Good Parts:” How Relational Others Influence Paid Careworkers’ Descriptions of Their Work as Meaningful
dc.typeJournal Article
uc.collegeFaculty of Arts
uc.departmentLanguage, Social and Political Sciences
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