There are a number of theoretical problems in the growing field of ‘meaningful work’: a lack of precision in the basic concept of work, leading to dearth of comparative research. A disregard of worker agency, leading to an impression that meaningful wage labour is a gift from employers to employees. A dichotomisation into meaningful work being either a subjective or an objective phenomenon, leading to unnecessary simplification. And, finally, another dichotomisation into waged work or types of jobs being either meaningful or meaningless, leading to a lack of variation. In this concluding chapter, we suggest solutions to these problems that we have dealt with at several places in the book, before we take up the new framework for analysing meaningful and meaningless wage labour.

Informed by the everlasting concern with what a good life is and how it can be achieved by the individual in a society, the field of Humanities have a rich tradition in discussing different domains of meaningfulness, including meaningful life and work. This chapter discusses a variety of humanist contributions to meaningful waged work. An integral feature of Humanist accounts is the understanding that what constitutes humanity is people’s drive to endow their relations, interests, abilities and desires with meaning. As this chapter will showcase, contributions in this field differ in terms of what drives people’s search for meaning, what the experience of meaningfulness consists of, if essential requirements exist before meaningfulness can be experienced or if one domain of meaningfulness trumps others. Discussing further whether the experience of meaningfulness as self-realisation and transcendence is possible in relations and activities that are in part determined by others, the chapter investigates the relationship between freedom, structure and agency.

The thought of the meaning of work in the capitalist labour process has been a central pillar in many discussions of work, employment and organisational life in the social sciences. Meaningful work, however, is, if anything, an undercurrent in the modern classics of working life research, where the spotlight is on the struggle that is at the heart of workers’ attempts to derive meaning from paid work. In this chapter we discuss understandings of meaningful work that emerge between the nexus of the meaningfulness and the meaninglessness of wage labour in some of the most noted of this literature in the post–World War II period. From this discourse we crystallise six tendencies in discussions of the possibility to solve the problem of the lack of meaning of waged work. We derive from this discussion implications for approaching an understanding of the politics of meaningful and meaningless waged work.

Organic data have the potential to enable innovative measurements and research designs by virtue of capturing human behavior and interactions in social, educational, and organizational processes. Yet what makes organic data valuable also raises privacy concerns for those individuals whose personal information is being collected and analyzed. This chapter discusses the potential privacy threats posed by organic datasets and the technical tools available to ameliorate such threats. Also noted is the importance for educators and research scientists to participate in interdisciplinary research that addresses the privacy challenges arising from the collection and use of organic data.

Despite promising early evidence for the validity of well-designed game-based assessments (GBAs) for employee selection, the interaction between the complexity of games and their use in international and cross-cultural contexts is unknown. To address this, this paper presents a descriptive, qualitative study examining the perspectives of both GBA vendors and organizational stakeholders related to cross-cultural issues unique to GBAs related to 1) privacy, 2) legality, and 3) applicant reactions. Overall, privacy and legality concerns appeared similar for GBAs as with other assessment methods, although certain common characteristics of GBAs amplify common concerns. Applicant reactions appeared more positive to GBAs across national borders and cultures than traditional assessments, although some international differences were reported. Other cross-cultural topics raised included international differences in the conflation of GBA and artificial intelligence, in the importance of mobile-first design, and in the ability of GBAs to provide a more language-agnostic experience than other assessment types.

Social media is an ever-increasing aspect of the internet presence and daily life. Despite certain challenges in defining the construct, researchers have realized the possibility that social media can allow for the measurement and assessment of a wide variety of variables. Throughout the ever-growing number of social media sites and apps across countries and languages, there is an abundance of formats that researchers can utilize, such as photo, text, location, video, and more. In this book chapter, we conducted a literature search and identified four constructs that are most frequently studied using social media (i.e., personality, emotion/affect/mood, life satisfaction, and political views). We then summarized a list of studies that use social media to investigate these four constructs. Additionally, social media offers unique opportunities for researchers to assess various cross-cultural data, which can present its own challenges. We also provide examples of the potential opportunities and challenges, as well as ethical and technical considerations for researchers to keep in mind.

Technology, that is, the output of human innovation, has always been central to human progress worldwide. Early on, the ancients developed the wheel, concrete, calculus, and paper, which led to advances in transportation, construction, and communication. Today, the incarnation of technology falls in the realm of the digital and computational, and its progress has been rapid, even arguably exponential. In his chapter, “The Law of Accelerating Returns,” Ray Kurzweil writes, “An analysis of the history of technology shows that technological change is exponential, contrary to the common-sense ‘intuitive linear’ view. So we won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century – it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today’s rate)” (Kurzweil, 2004, p. 381).