WORK STREAMS
My research is organized around two complementary streams that examine how cultural ideals about work affect both workers and the organizations that employ them.
Meaningful Work and Careers
I examine how people develop, pursue, and revise aspirations for meaningful work over the course of a career. This research explores meaningful work as a cultural ideal, investigates how workers negotiate changing relationships to work, and advances theory on motivation, identity, and careers.
Organizations and Meaningful Work
I investigate how organizations influence the pursuit of meaningful work. Across studies of workforce-development organizations and corporate social responsibility, I explore how organizations cultivate aspirations, structure opportunities, and shape how workers understand the purpose of their work.
DISSERTATION
The Cultural Politics of Meaningful Work: Ideology, Motivation, and Constraint
My dissertation investigates how the cultural ideal of meaningful work shapes individuals, organizations, and labor markets. Bringing together conceptual and ethnographic research, it examines how workers develop aspirations for meaningful work, how organizations harness those aspirations, and how labor-market institutions influence which futures workers come to see as possible and worth pursuing.
The conceptual portion of the dissertation develops a theory of what I call the Meaningful Work Ideology, showing how the same cultural ideal that encourages fulfillment, purpose, and self-actualization at work can also raise expectations beyond what most jobs can satisfy, leaving workers vulnerable to disappointment and exploitation. Building on this theory, the empirical portion examines what happens when that ideal collides with labor-market constraints. Drawing on a year-long ethnography of a workforce development program, I show how labor-market intermediaries govern workers' aspirations by cultivating some ambitions while redirecting or deferring others in response to market demands.
PUBLICATIONS
Weinstein, M. L. & Hirsch, P. M. (2022). For Love and Money: Rethinking Motivations for the “Great Resignation.” Journal of Management Inquiry, 32 (2): 174-176, https://doi.org/10.1177/10564926221141595.
MANUSCRIPTS UNDER REVIEW
Weinstein, M. L. & Finkel, E. J. A Theory of Work as a Cultural Ideal. Under review at Research in Organizational Behavior.
Manuscript name altered to protect blind peer-review
WORKING PAPERS AND SELECTED WORK IN PROGRESS
Weinstein, M. L. Pragmatic Choices, Passionate Signals: Market-Compatible Motivation in Workforce Intermediation.
Weinstein, M. L. & King, B. G. Responsible for What? The Structural Foundations of CSR Variability.
Weinstein, M. L. & Rahman, H. A. Making Talent Legible: Selective Transformation and Market Alignment in Reskilling Intermediaries.
Weinstein, M. L. Called to the Career or Called to the Call? An Examination of Specificity in Narratives of Calling.
Weinstein, M. L. Hanging Up the Call: Leaving Meaningful Work Behind.