Modeling meaningful work: A complementary variable- and person-centered approach to the psychometric structure of meaningful work

Meaningful work is an important yet complex organizational construct. Although meaningful work has historically been conceptualized as a simple unidimensional construct, current meaningful work theory considers meaningful work to be phenomenologically rich and complex. Unfortunately, the typical latent variable modeling approaches used to model meaningful work may bias results because they do not account for the psychometric complexity characterizing meaningful work. Towards this, the present study used the complementary person- and variable-centric approach to model the psychometric structure of meaningful work as operationalized by two popular measures (i.e., the Work and Meaning Inventory [WAMI] and the Comprehensive Meaningful Work Scale [CMWS]). Results provided evidence that the CMWS measures the complexity of meaningful work (i.e., multidimensional, hierarchical, and idiosyncratic nature). Although the more complex WAMI models had good model fit, there was evidence for unidimensionality across archival samples and a newly collected sample. These results suggest that different operationalizations of meaningful work may capture different aspects of the construct. Additionally, the person-centric LPA uncovered a 3-Profile solution of meaningful work for the CMWS, and these profiles exhibited different patterns of relations with work and life outcomes. Together, the results suggest that researchers should be modeling the psychometric complexity of meaningful work. Implications and future directions are discussed.