Being ‘Good’ Isn’t the Only Way to Go

April 19, 2014


www.nytimes.com | Aaron Hurst

Aaron Hurst, in an article for the New York Times, urges the importance of engagement in the workplace, citing research from Jane Dutton and Amy Wrzesniewski:

“Finding meaning is about being engaged. When Amy Wrzesniewski, an associate professor at Yale, and Jane E. Dutton, a professor at the University of Michigan, along with other researchers, looked at workers in a wide range of organizations, from hospital cleaners to administrators and managers, they found several ways in which workers crafted purpose in each profession.

“Their findings reinforced previous research that had demonstrated that the ways individuals viewed work might be more tied to their personality traits than to the work itself. They infuse their work with purpose learned from past experiences. How they view work may largely be driven by the role models they had growing up. Some see it as merely a chore in their lives, while others view it as the core of life.”