Meaningful work is a double-edged sword: While it often proves beneficial to – and is hence pursued by – workers and their organizations, it can also have negative consequences for those engaging in it. Hence, a key challenge is understanding how organizations can enable their members to do meaningful work while limiting negative implications. The present study addresses this puzzle through a multi-case ethnographic study of volunteer NGOs in the ‘Jungle of Calais’ refugee camps. We identify and compare two organizational approaches to managing meaningful work – a bottom-up and a top-down approach – showing how, in the bottom-up case, workers maneuver themselves into a purpose trap and ultimately burn out, while, in the top-down case, they manage to avoid such outcomes. We theorize that, when an organization adopts a broad organizational purpose, workers personalize their roles to maximize meaningfulness. This, however, prevents disengagement from said roles, eliciting the conditions for burnout. On the other hand, when an organization adopts a focused purpose, it can guide workers to enact roles in ways that support disengagement, facilitating more adaptive strain regulation, which mitigates burnout. By building a model of how organizations guide the pursuit of meaningful work we contribute to research on meaningfulness, organizational purpose, and burnout.
