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this podcast is brought to you by knowled of [Music] Warton welcome to knowledge at Wharton
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I'm angrew basuni today with me is Wharton management Professor Amy rzeski she's been taking a look at something
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that we can all relate to which is the meaning of work kind of how we how we derrive a sense of purpose and identity
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from the thing that we chose to do for a living her latest paper looks at occup ational instability in other words what
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happens to that sense of meaning and purpose when our careers are threatened or we can no longer do that thing that
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we love so much Amy thanks for being here thank you so much for having me I am very interested in your paper and why
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you took a specific look at the field of Journalism which has just really undergone tremendous changes in the last
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15 years or so and I know because I used to be in it I was a newspaper journalist
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online journalist for more than 20 years so for me your paper feels really personal uh but I wanted to ask you so
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why did you choose to study occupational instability and explain why uh careers in journalism provided a context for you
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to do so it's a great question I H am always interested in trying to understand Dynamics and processes that
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shape how people make meaning of their work and I'm particularly interested in
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contexts where it's likely to be challenging to do that for some reason so that could be anything from the person
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Works in a stigmatized occupation the person is working remotely from the organization and is physically isolated
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from their colleagues that was more novel before the pandemic um and in this instance of this paper there's a lot
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that we know about how people navigate job loss and questions of meaning around that but what's different about
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occupational destabilization or in the case of Journalism uh particularly print journalism um occupational decline that
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it presents a really different puzzle it's not just about finding another role
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in another uh organization the number of roles is shrinking so fast and the decline is so uh severe that people who
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had dedicated their whole professional lives who had invested their identities in journalism were increasingly finding
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themselves without a perch from which to do that at work and we felt Winnie and I
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my co-author felt like that's a unique set of challenges for people for whom
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the work that they're doing is very meaningful this would be interesting to study you had some crushing uh factoids
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in your paper that the journalism field has declined by about 80% One of the fastest declining uh disciplines for
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that require a college degree you really put that um that decline in context there so let's talk about how you went
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about studying this occupational instability yes so here my co-author Winnie Jang who is a faculty member at
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inad really gets the credit and I want to make sure that I give that to her so she as a doctoral student came to me and
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said I'm really interested in this context of Journalism because it seems like it's under attack it is not just in
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the US but in different parts of the world too um it's in Decline this is is
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likely to yield interesting insights around how people are navigating uh this and navigating questions of meaning
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which was our mutual research interest um and so it began simply by reaching out to some of the people that we knew
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who either were working in journalism or had decided to leave journalism to just
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learn more about their experiences and from there we realized this is just a context that is full of insight and full
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of Frank pain over what's happening in the occupation um we really ought to go
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ahead and do a much more systematic uh Approach at drawing people into a sample to interview them um and develop a
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protocol and IRB and sort of all of that you know uh research study protocols um
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and begin collecting data and so we eventually uh interviewed in sum a total of 94 journalists um 72 of them we
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followed over time to look at the ways in which they navigated either figuring out a way to stay in journalism or an
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exit entirely uh and looking at what seemed to be related to those kinds of outcomes I really want to encourage
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people to take an actual look at this paper because those interviews that you you and your co-author called are just
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so rich uh you have a lot of excerpts in the paper uh where you talk to them about their feelings um about leaving
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the profession or staying in the profession um and it just provides so much fantastic um insight and data into
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this thing that you're describing in your paper which is the fixed meaning and the flexible meaning can we talk a
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little bit about about that concept and what it means yes and and before I do I just want to say the data I agree with
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you the data are absolutely beautiful from the point of view of these transcribed interviews and the coding
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that we did of those interviews and it's not lost on me that these are journalists these are people who think
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and read and write for a living and write in a way that is compelling to Broad sads of the public or the specific
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audiences that they're targeting and so it it's perhaps unsurprising but still
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very moving how they talk about their own experiences because I've interviewed
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occupational populations across the gamut of Industries and sectors and so on in the US um and this these are by
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far I think some of the most profound and profoundly beautiful beautiful and poignant quotes that I've I've ever had
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in a study and so um to the question of fixed and flexible meanings one of the things that we found as we started to
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delve into these interviews and ask people simply about their experiences with journalism how they came to enter
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it um if how it had changed over time if it had for them and how they were navigating this one of the things we
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realized is some of the journalists in the sample talked about work is being deeply meaningful to them they talked
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about the tasks the relationships and the kind of impact that journalism has as elements that were constituting a
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whole that these were elements that went together they were kind of locked together it's what it meant to be a
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journalist and there was no way to take any of those elements the writing the public service the advocacy the
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community- based work there would be no way to take any of those pieces out of the journalistic hole and have it
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continue to mean anything in some other context writing say for uh other kinds of um entities or Outlets or what have
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you um and we called those people the fixed meaning mindset people um because they really seem to again not be able to
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see any of the portfolio of activities or skills that journalists have as being portable to anything other than
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journalism and felt like it would become utterly meaningless to do this same activity whether that was writing or
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what have you in another kind of occupation or profession and those contrasted with the people who were also
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in the sample who also felt that journalism was very meaningful to them also mourned what they saw as the
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decline of this occupation but were far more able to move out of that uh experience of mourning and out of those
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kinds of emotional experiences to say well but there are many skills that journalists have have and I could take
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this one piece of it that I like and practice it or execute it over here and it's a way for me to keep going and to
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keep myself employed and though they never saw that other kind of work from their words as being nearly as
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meaningful as journalism was um it was at least a way for them to keep going there's a bit of a survival
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element there um can you can you take those those two concept Concepts fixed meaning flexible meaning and translate
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them for us especially in terms of maybe other types of professions individuals who find themselves at a Crossroads in
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their career path absolutely I think any occupation that is beginning to feel the
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threat of uh it's often technological change but it can also come from other
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forces as well economic forces um where the occupation is Contracting declining or destabilized somehow um any of those
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kinds of situations or contexts is is going to be characterized by the same thing that we studied which is to say
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it's going to challenge can you keep doing this kind of work with these kinds
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of people having this kind of impact in the same way and if the answer is no because things have changed in the
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environment around that occupation or around that job then anyone who's in that situation is going to be dealing
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with the same kind of challenges that the journalists were so any occupation in which technological change is either
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shrinking the occup or changing the mix of what it is that people in the organization or in the
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occupation do for a living right um one of the things to make it personal during
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covid that I frankly think a lot of Faculty were thrilled about was nobody seemed to prefer all online school the
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students missed being in the classroom The Faculty missed being in the classroom with the students and there
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was a sense of what might have been a more looming technological threat that all education can happen online we don't
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need campuses any longer and so on uh was quickly revealed to be maybe less of a threat than we had worried um I'll
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expand on this to just say even in occupations that aren't declining or destabilizing if you think about an
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individual moving through the period of their over the course of their career someone could be promoted into a
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position that changes the mix of tasks relationships and impact that they see comprising the job in ways that they
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don't like if they see these things as fixed and fused and to be the professional they want to be they don't
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want to change or pull out any element of that then they will struggle also even with something that could be good
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news like a promotion if it is again threatening this sense of the meaningful hole of the occupation as they see it
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that's definitely true that makes me actually think of law enforcement where
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people who are uh like police officers working on the street on the beat maybe don't want to become detectives where
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they're behind the desk because it it creates a different a dissonance for them um in terms of the reason they got
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into the work in the first place or even teachers you know teachers in the classroom versus teachers working in
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administration um that's yeah that's super interesting um let me ask you too
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about uh you talked a little bit about um Automation and disruption makes me think about you know journalism was
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threatened not just by the internet and by automation but it was also threatened
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by changes in the culture changes in consumption the way that people wanted to consume news and
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when I think about that I also think about other professions like for example retail in a business context retail is
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being challenged by changes in consumption especially during covid uh changes in automation changes in
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transaction all those sorts of forces are acting on retail uh so let's talk about what are the implications for for
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managers dealing with occupational instability maybe employees who who as we've talked about people who find
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themselves in this situation what do they need to know what what are some of the things that they can they can sort
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of control yes um well I think it can be quite difficult to control the larger societal economic technological forces
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right those are very hard to keep at Bay so I think the thing that we need to focus on is the kind of control that
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people can have and maybe managers can help people have over their response to this so on the one hand we could see uh
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a journalist having a fixed meaning kind of mindset as being quite heroic right they're going down with the ship they
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are once a journalist always a journalist um but I have to say you know these people Inspire great worry in me
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because they were often you know taking jobs where they were being paid kind of pennies on the dollar of what they had
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been able to command in more um stable times in journalism and so they were yes kind of holding to their original
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occupation but doing it in ways that uh were I think leading them you know into what I worried would be peril right
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around their ability to survive uh and to keep doing this work in this way um so I think probably the most helpful
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thing that managers can do and employees can keep in mind when facing this kind of instability is making a proactive
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decision about either if you want to stay the course what that's going to take uh and you know how else you want
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to try to support yourself or um keep yourself stable while you do that but it seems to me that helping people
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understand the need to evolve if the context is requiring that and then to be systematic and thoughtful about looking
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at what are the tasks and interactions relationships um kinds of impact that they're having in the work that they
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love most and then to be quite disciplined about thinking about where else could that experience be either uh
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duplicated or if it can't be duplicated or repeated elsewhere that at least an
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echo of it could be to take some element of the most meaningful aspects of the work as a guide to carry into how might
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you uh look at uh the kinds of occupations or roles or even different positions in the organization that you
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could possibly take so Amy I know that you've been studying work meaning and
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identity for the span of your career so here's where I'm going to sort of Plum
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some of that Knowledge from you and ask you what expert advice do you have for us in terms of work identity and
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occupational instability and all those things that you've pulled from your body
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of research um if I if I looked across the span of time that I've been studying
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these questions I think my advice comes down to two points uh ultimately the first would be it very much seems to be
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the case that people who choose or move into or happen to find themselves in work in which the work is about more
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than just an economic exchange with the organization or with the employer that those people seem to be better off in
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both the short and longer term if the work can be attached or connected for the worker regardless of what kind of
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work it is to something that they see as being worthwhile to them and to the world in some way that seems to make an
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enormous difference in people's experience of their work and people's satisfaction with their lives so that
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would be the first piece of advice is uh you know if possible find or maneuver your way um between organizations it
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could be within the same organization into something where the meat of what you're doing is something that you feel
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matters beyond the fact that it's also throwing off a paycheck um if you can't
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do that if that's not feasible for some reason uh and moving on or moving along
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is just not possible um I would suggest in that case my second point which is to think about
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how can you act upon the boundaries of that job job essentially craft the job that you're in to change some things
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about the tasks that you're doing change some things about the interactions and
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relationships you're engaging in change some things about how it is you're
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thinking about and approaching the job or the role as a whole that will help you derive the kinds of meaning that you
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most want to experience in the work sometimes people do this uh in secret they don't let their managers know that
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they're making these tweaks to their job designs um and they seem to be quite
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powerful for for helping people have a sense of agency in their work but also physically in reality changing parts of
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how they're enacting the job in ways that allow them to derive the kind of meaning they most seek I think that's
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great advice and something we all need to hear right now in these difficult times so thank you for that and thank
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you for being here um the paper once again is titled perceived fixed or flexible meaning toward a model of
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meaning fixedness and navigating occupational destabilization and of course we want to mention once again
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your co-author witty Jen with nced uh also the paper appears if you want to look it up in the journal
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administrative science quarterly if you enjoyed this conversation we invite you to check out all our content just type
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in knowledge at Wharton in your search bar I'm Andie bass thanks for being with
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