“A Little Thanks Changes My World”: When and why dirty work employees feel meaningfulness at work

Past research suggests that due to work dirtiness, employees performing dirty work derive their work meaningfulness from the social identity process, through which they enact stigma- or taint-countering tactics at the collective or individual level. However, identity research suggests that relational identity achieved through positive responses from specific and significant others at the interpersonal level outside of occupations can be important in enriching the meaning of work for employees. Through this theoretical lens, we argue and find in two multisource and multiwave field studies that dirty work employees’ perceived work dirtiness renders their work less meaningful through a decreased sense of social worth. However, positive responses such as clients’ gratitude can attenuate the negative effects of perceived work dirtiness. This study extends research on dirty work by revealing that relational self can also be an important source for dirty work employees’ meaningfulness at work via their social worth perception.