What Makes Social Work Meaningful? Evidence for a Curvilinear Relationship of Meaningful Work on Work Engagement with Psychological Capital as the Moderator

ABSTRACT Drawing on the conservation of resources theory, this study examines the curvilinear relationship between social workers’ meaningful work and work engagement. Data gathered from 223 social workers reveal that the relationship between meaningful work and work engagement showed a U-shaped curve when psychological capital is low. In contrast, this relationship showed an inverted U-shaped curve when psychological capital is high. Our study makes significant contributions to the literature in the following ways. First and foremost, this is the first paper that provides an established base to validate the momentary and changing nature of meaningful work empirically. Second, we further addressed how the fluctuating nature of meaningful work can be addressed through individuals’ demographic variables of psychological capital. Finally, our results provide managerial interventions that support businesses in advancing the understanding of psychological processes in contexts related to the broad area of work and in organizations. PRACTICE POINTS Meaningful work enhances work engagement. Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) should provide a safe space where social workers can share their victories, perspectives, and frustrations. NPOs should provide ample support to employees and ensure they fit well into the new social work environment. Given the malleable characteristics of PsyCap, NPOs can offer interventions in the form of training to increase social workers’ sense of hope, efficacy, resilience and optimism. The curvilinear effect of PsyCap on the relationship between meaningful work and work engagement shows that NPOs should also design pathways to engage social workers with high PsyCap constantly.