Why work? For some people in some cultures, the answer is
not always obvious. Imagine a relatively poorly-educated, unemployed person
living in a country with an adequate to good government safety net. The
amount of effort demanded from a job for which they are qualified and its
remuneration could be such that the individual might live more comfortably if
he/she chose not to work. In such a social environment, one might be
ridiculed, called a fool, for choosing "menial" poorly remunerated
work the performance of which yields a decreased standard of living when
compared to the life that could be lived as an unemployed person. Of
course, even better-educated individuals who could work above the so-called
poverty level might eschew employment, preferring to live via state welfare for
any of a thousand reasons.
Work is a critical factor in
lifestyle and health. Although work's financial and status values are
obvious, other issues are less readily apparent. To name a couple
lifestyle advantages: work can satisfy our needs to be active, to socialize,
and to exercise our competencies. Health-wise, among other things, work
encourages us to maintain a reasonable sleep schedule, to refrain from
mind-altering substances, and to be fit enough to do our jobs. Not
surprisingly then, psychologists carefully study human work activities.
Ruth Kanfer and her colleagues
(2017) sought to determine how well we now understand work motivation relative
to dominant ideas from the past. As one
might expect, they decided that work motivation is not static. Our desire for work varies according to our extant
needs and to external circumstances. The
emotions connected with work are particularly salient in determining our effort
and performance. They noted that our
needs, desires, interests, and motives determine work goals that impel us toward
action. Specific and difficult goals,
they felt, comprised important conscious determinants that combine with
nonconscious influences that ultimately result in whether and to what extent we
work. The bottom line was that several factors
reciprocally interact to determine whether we will work. They are: our personal attributes, our
individual experiences, our personal environments, our culture, the resources
that we possess, and the resources that we lack.
The answer to “Why work?” then is far from simple. At base, as is true for any complex human
behavior, the answer to the question derives from interactions among internal factors (e.g., our personality) and external factors (e.g., our interpersonal field). Moreover, everything that Kanfer concluded
about work motivation could be applied to work non-motivation. And, significantly, although she and her
colleagues investigated work as employment, virtually everything, except perhaps
for financial incentives, can be used to inform our understanding of work of a
non-employment type.
So, I conclude that the desire to work is dynamic and idiosyncratic. It fluctuates due to internal and external
factors. We might love our work one day
and hate it the next. In those extreme
circumstances we have the opportunity to introspect about the meaning of that
particular work and its particular value. By taking
the time and exerting the effort to mindfully consider the work’s meaning and
value (versus continuing on unconscious automatic pilot, as most of us
typically do) we can make a deliberate reasoned decision about how to proceed. Some persons then might decide that it is
preferable to work at a substandard job while others would decide to jettison that
same job in order to relax or to look for another job. Although work is critical for human well-being, the kind of work makes all the difference.
Reference
Kanfer, R., Frese, M., and Johnson, R. (2017). Motivation related to work: A century of progress. Journal of Applied Psychology, 102, 3, 338-355. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/apl0000133
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