The world of work over the past 3 years has been characterized by a great reset due to the COVID-19 pandemic, giving an even more central role to scholarly discussions of ethics and the future of work. Such discussions have the potential to inform whether, when, and which work is viewed and experienced as meaningful. Yet, thus far, debates concerning ethics, meaningful work, and the future of work have largely pursued separate trajectories. Not only is bridging these research spheres important for the advancement of meaningful work as a field of study but doing so can potentially inform the organizations and societies of the future. In proposing this Special Issue, we were inspired to address these intersections, and we are grateful to have this platform for advancing an integrative conversation, together with the authors of the seven selected scholarly contributions. Each article in this issue takes a unique approach to addressing these topics, with some emphasizing ethics while others focus on the future aspects of meaningful work. Taken together, the papers indicate future research directions with regard to: (a) the meaning of meaningful work, (b) the future of meaningful work, and (c) how we can study the ethics of meaningful work in the future. We hope these insights will spark further relevant scholarly and practitioner conversations.

Any fundamental examination of managerial practices must consider a philosophical conundrum at the heart of market exchange. Economically, the opportunity for profit seems to demand somebody else’s loss, and ethically, we must not take advantage of others’ misfortune. In a market system involving a multiplicity of stakeholders, profit opportunities may arise in which relationships between winners and losers are distant, indirect, or even nonexistent; their motives are multivalent; and their market participation may be intentional or accidental. Reflecting two decades later upon several cases arising from the 9/11/2001 terrorist attacks, this paper describes several examples of profiting from loss that demonstrate the ubiquity and variety of the problem. It also invokes numerous bodies of literature that demonstrate the inherent complexity and interdisciplinarity of the problem and the absence of determinative principles to answer the question of when it is justifiable to profit from loss. The paper positions casuistry, the ancient philosophical art of case analysis that resembles modern business pedagogy, as a complement to ethical theory. The Loss Agency-Division of Benefits framework developed in the paper demonstrates the value of philosophy to managerial practices when economic theory is insufficient for ethically classifying and evaluating forms of profiting from loss.

In recent years, research on meaningful work has expanded by scholars from diverse research fields, studying which factors contribute to employees experiencing their work as meaningful. While these research efforts are valuable, they tend to focus on the role of job design while paying less attention to the role of social context (e.g., relationships and connections inside and outside work) in fostering and maintaining meaningful work, resulting in this knowledge being limited. To address this shortcoming, this symposium brings together an internationally-diverse group of scholars to engage in conversation about the role of social context in fostering and maintaining experiences of meaningful work. This symposium includes five presentations followed by a discussion. Two of the papers deal with the role of social context in understanding how individuals justify or subjectively perceive why their work is meaningful. The other two papers examine how positive relationships at work and particularly in one’s team can help to maintain experiences of meaningful work in meaningfulness-harming and challenging organizational situations. The last paper explores how workers in meaningful occupations relate to their clients depending on the different institutional roles that they adopt. With this symposium we aim to a) contribute to the understanding of social context as a source of perceiving and justifying one’s work as meaningful, b) show the importance of social context for maintaining experiences of meaningful work in harmful and challenging organizational situations, c) broaden the understanding of the influence of social context on meaningful work from the predominantly studied colleagues and leaders to teams, clients, and significant others, and d) develop new avenues and possibilities for future research in this field. Negotiating Balance, Purpose and Legitimacy in Narratives of Worthy Work Presenter: Adrian Madden; U. of Huddersfield Presenter: Catherine Bailey; King's College London Presenter: Marjolein Lips-Wiersma; AUT U. Family Recognition as a Source of Meaningful Work Presenter: Seonyoung Hwang; Aalto U. School of Business Presenter: Evgenia Lysova; Vrije U. Amsterdam Presenter: Yiluyi Zeng; School of Business and Management, Royal Holloway, U. of London, UK I Know How You Can Help Me!: The Role of Others in Maintaining Experiences of Meaningful Work Presenter: Evgenia Lysova; Vrije U. Amsterdam Presenter: Claire Schulze Schleithoff; Vrije U. Amsterdam, School of Business and Economics Experiencing Meaningful Work During COVID-19: The Role of Team Holding Behaviors Presenter: Josine L. Janssen; Vrije U. Amsterdam Presenter: Anna Dekker; Hogeschool Leiden When (Falsely Perceiving) Power is Liability: Burnout and Meaningful Work among Frontline Workers Presenter: Carrie Oelberger; U. of Minnesota

To commemorate 40 years since the founding of the Journal of Business Ethics, the editors in chief of the journal have invited the editors to provide commentaries on the future of business ethics. This essay comprises a selection of commentaries aimed at creating dialogue around the theme The Ethics and Politics of Academic Knowledge Production. Questions of who produces knowledge about what, and how that knowledge is produced, are inherent to editing and publishing academic journals. At the Journal of Business Ethics, we understand the ethical responsibility of academic knowledge production as going far beyond conventions around the integrity of the research content and research processes. We are deeply aware that access to resources, knowledge of the rules of the game, and being able to set those rules, are systematically and unequally distributed. One could ask the question "for whom is knowledge now ethical'"? (See the Burrell commentary.) We have a responsibility to address these inequalities and open up our journal to lesser heard voices, ideas, and ways of being. Our six commentators pursue this through various aspects of the ethics and politics of academic knowledge production. Working with MacIntyre's scheme of practices and institutions, Andrew West provides commentary on the internal good of business ethics learning and education. Inviting us to step out of the cave, Christopher Michaelson urges a clear-eyed, unblinking focus on the purposes and audiences of business ethics scholarship. As developmental editor, Scott Taylor uncovers some of the politics of peer review with the aim of nurturing of unconventional research. Mike Hyman presents his idiosyncratic view of marketing ethics. In the penultimate commentary, Julie Nelson attributes difficulties in the academic positioning of the Business Ethics field to the hegemony of a masculine-centric model of the firm. And finally, Gibson Burrell provides a powerful provocation to go undercover as researcher-investigators in a parallel ethics of the research process.

Business ethics is one of the “unsettled humanities” in a management curriculum that tends to value instrumental and measurable goods. However, the value of business ethics may not be apparent to students until they experience unpredictable challenges to their ethical values at work long after they have left the management classroom. This essay traces my journey to using music – particularly, British rock songs – to reinforce learning and retention of the essential feelings and ideas in my students’ learning experience. It draws upon contrasting theories of ethical and economic value, the role of narrative in ethical theory and pedagogy, and the associative powers of music to show how the lyrics and music of songs might help classroom learning resonate later in life. In doing so, the essay shows how the songs of rebellious rock musicians might unsettle stereotypical conceptions of business and resettle appreciation for the value of the arts and humanities in life and work.

Social scientific research on the meaning of work has depended mostly on workers own reports. These reports have contributed to our understanding of what makes work meaningful. However, research has treated the meaning of work as an individual-level phenomenon evaluated from a workers perspective. This empirical path does not capture how meaning is influenced by the perspectives of others. This paper asserts that research based on personal observations and experience limits our understanding of the meaning of work. We use accounts from third-person perspectives to show how meaning is perceived by someone other than the worker. We advocate the use of novel data sources that consider the meaning of work seen through the eyes of others. We develop two examples: the collected oral histories in Studs Terkels Working and the Portraits of Grief from the New York Times, narratives based on interviews with relatives and friends of 9/11 attack victims. In both cases, diverse people reflect on the place of work in a meaningful life. Third-person perspectives offer unique insight and practical guidance on what work means and how it is viewed by others. These views also mirror broad societal values about the importance of work in life.

Leo Tolstoy was on to behavioral ethics before there was such as a thing as behavioral ethics. Three scenes from his magnum opus, War and Peace, demonstrate that Tolstoy diagnosed some of the same problems that occupy modern behavioral ethics: confirmation bias, slippery-slope reasoning, and illusions of control. However, whereas modern behavioral ethics has done more to diagnose problems than to prescribe solutions, Tolstoy’s theories of moral psychology and leadership provide direction for human moral self-cultivation. This analysis of War and Peace also suggests that literary fiction can depict worlds at least as fertile as the real world for studying business ethics. Building upon this example, in an age and field which seems too often to prioritize scientific wisdom over that of the humanities, I speculate about how literary fiction can expand our research into more diverse actors and worlds of modern capitalism.

The 9/11 terrorist attacks manifested change in the world around us and caused many people to reevaluate their work and lives. Nearly two decades later, with the benefit of hindsight, we can see th...