Perceiving Fixed or Flexible Meaning: Toward a Model of Meaning Fixedness and Navigating Occupational Destabilization

Meaning of Work and Responses to Occupational Destabilization

While a constellation of identities and their facets may offer relief to those navigating occupational destabilization, what defines their challenged occupational identity may matter even more for how individuals fare. The meaning of work has long been a focus of research that purports to reveal how individuals define the relationship between their work and self and how this matters for their experience of work and life. Indeed, research suggests that the meaning of work influences people’s navigation of the various challenges their work entails, including its changes. For example, Schabram and Maitlis (2017) found that animal shelter workers could relate to their work in three different ways, leading to three paths of negotiating challenges at work. Studying Parisian subway drivers who were promoted to managerial roles as their subway trains became automated, Bourmault and Anteby (2020: 1452) found that they experienced “managerial blues” after an ostensibly attractive promotion because they derived a strong sense of meaning from personal, direct contact with passengers—a feature of working as drivers, not managers. While not focused on occupations, Rouse (2016) studied how founders navigate exits from their organizations, finding that whether they see their work as bringing personal or social benefits shapes distinct disengagement paths. In particular, these studies showed that the meanings individuals perceive from work associate with different emotional experiences and actions in response to work challenges or changes, suggesting that the meaning of work can provide a helpful lens to understand people’s different responses to occupational destabilization, especially for those with fewer identities or lacking complexity in their identities.

However, little research has examined how the meaning that people perceive in their work relates to their responses to the potential challenges of occupational destabilization. Research on job loss and involuntary role exits has generally not examined the role of work meanings in these experiences (Kanfer, Wanberg, and Kantrowitz, 2001; McKee-Ryan et al., 2005; Wanberg, Zhu, and Van Hooft, 2010; but see Kaufman, 1982; Wrzesniewski, 1999; and Jiang and Wrzesniewski, 2022 for exceptions). This is a critical omission, as several studies have suggested that the meaning of work matters for one’s experience after job loss. For example, Kaufman (1982: 16) argued that compared to nonprofessionals, professionals, or “those in occupations requiring a base of knowledge and skills acquired through higher education and subsequent experience,” tend to consider work as playing a more central role in life, which makes the psychological effects of job loss more severe. Further, Wrzesniewski (1999) found that compared to those who see their work as a job (i.e., focusing primarily on work as a means to a financial end) or a career (i.e., focusing primarily on advancement in their occupation), job seekers who see their work as a calling (i.e., focusing primarily on work as a fulfilling end in itself fostering contributions to the greater good) take more time searching for a new job. Furthermore, existing research on the meaning of work has largely assumed the work as well as the broader context in which it is performed to be stable (Wrzesniewski et al., 1997; Schabram and Maitlis, 2017; but see Bourmault and Anteby, 2020; Jiang, 2021 for exceptions), thereby overlooking dynamics of meaning when work undergoes undesirable changes such as in the case of occupational destabilization. We need better understanding of how people make meaning of their work in the wake of occupational destabilization and how their perceived meaning influences their responses to the associated challenges, which include but are not limited to job loss.

Overall, our review of the relevant literatures suggests unanswered questions about why individuals differ in their responses to the involuntary work changes that often result from occupational destabilization. While previous research suggests that the way people perceive the meaning of their work might be an important factor, we do not know precisely how it might shape people’s varied responses to undesired work changes. By examining how individuals respond to the destabilization of their occupation, whether they respond differently, and why, we hope to enhance our knowledge of this process.

Research Context

We were interested in studying individuals who were personally experiencing the destabilization of their occupation and navigating their way through an undefined set of next steps. This aim led us to choose journalists as the focus of our research. Among occupations that have been destabilized, journalism provides a poignant setting.

Journalists gather, prepare, write, and distribute news or other current events for media platforms such as newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations, and increasingly, the internet (Weaver and Wilhoit, 1991; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2015). Depending on the context, journalists can be more specifically called reporters, correspondents, columnists, editors, and photojournalists in their organizations. Over the past three decades, two major destabilizing changes occurred in journalism, compelling large numbers of journalists to leave their employment. First, the number of journalism jobs has declined considerably. Second, the content of the work has changed in ways that many journalists find unacceptable.

The destabilization of journalism as an occupation has accompanied the rise of the internet, social media, and other advancing technologies. Each advance has contributed to the changing landscape of this occupation, especially in the realm of print media (Beam, Weaver, and Brownlee, 2009). Since 2004, newspaper circulation in the U.S. has shrunk by more than half (Pew Research Center, 2021). Major U.S. metropolitan dailies have closed or downsized, including the San Francisco Chronicle, the Detroit Free Press, and the Tucson Citizen. The number of newsroom employees in the U.S. has dropped from around 458,000 in 1990 to about 85,000 in 2020, a decrease of over 80 percent, and is projected to continue to fall (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2021). In 2012, “reporter” was named one of the 30 fastest declining occupations (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2012); it was the only occupation on the list requiring at least a bachelor’s degree (Weissmann, 2012).

While many journalists have lost their jobs, others feel compelled to leave the occupation altogether due to the grim outlook on their future prospects as well as undesirable changes in the nature of their work (Pew Research Center, 2021). With the rise of the internet, cheaper or even free advertising options reduced newspaper revenue (Pew Research Center, 2021). Increasing popularity of social media and decreasing readership of traditional newspapers further shrank revenues (Dimmick, Chen, and Li, 2004). Revenue decreases drove massive layoffs, especially of longer-tenured journalists who commanded higher salaries (Pew Research Center, 2021), leading to lower newspaper quality, which further decreased readership (Franklin, 2008). Layoffs added responsibilities to the already heavy workload of layoff survivors, forcing increased productivity and generating burnout (Reinardy, 2013). Furthermore, journalism has been transformed by quantification, and many journalists in the U.S. disapprove of performance measures based on the number of clicks their articles receive (Christin, 2018). Over time, as revenue, circulation, and readership decreased, the cycle of layoffs, downsizings, and closings continued.

Akin to how shifts in blue-collar work have occurred, advancing technologies have gradually led machines or the general public to execute the traditionally white-collar work done by journalists. A growing number of news agencies and outlets, including The Associated Press and The Washington Post, have begun to use artificial intelligence to automate news-making (Peiser, 2019). With the rise of portable electronics and social media, the public is now a news supplier, reporting current events more quickly than professional news teams do (Knight, Geuze, and Gerlis, 2008). Digital platforms have enabled rapid dissemination of information from both valid and invalid sources, challenging core principles of journalism dedicated to accuracy and objectivity (Franklin, 2008; O’Sullivan and Heinonen, 2008; Hermida, 2010; Tameling and Broersma, 2013). Traditionally, journalism is expected to uphold nine core principles, according to Kovach and Rosenstiel (2001: 12–13):

1) journalism’s first obligation is to the truth; 2) its first loyalty is to citizens; 3) its essence is discipline of verification; 4) its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover; 5) it must serve as an independent monitor of power; 6) it must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise; 7) it must strive to make the significant interesting and relevant; 8) it must keep the news comprehensive and proportional; and 9) its practitioners must be allowed to exercise their personal conscience.

Partly as a result of the changes we describe, following these principles has become more difficult for journalists (Zelizer, 2009; Reid and Ramarajan, 2021). The destabilization of journalism through the declining number of positions and the deteriorating nature of work over the last three decades made this context particularly well-suited to examine how incumbents respond to the destabilization of their occupation, whether they respond differently, and why.

Sampling and Data Collection

Our sampling and data collection evolved over three stages to match our emerging research focus and theoretical categories (Locke, 2001). We began our study of journalists with a different research question: how journalists in different countries navigate their unique occupational challenges. In stage one, we recruited current and former journalists in the U.S. and China through convenience and snowball sampling, starting with personal connections. After the first 12 interviews, we found that navigating journalism’s destabilization was a salient theme and whether journalists expressed a calling orientation toward the work seemed to associate with different responses. We then decided to focus only on the U.S. journalists to understand how they navigate the destabilization of their occupation differently and why. These 12 interviews served as pilot interviews for the current study.

In stage two, given our new research focus, we searched for unemployed or former journalists in the U.S. whose last job was at a newspaper, because newspapers have experienced the largest decline among all news media in the overall destabilization of the journalism industry (Pew Research Center, 2021), representing an extreme case that makes the dynamics of interest more visible (Yin, 1984; Eisenhardt, 1989). The findings from our pilot interviews indicated a potential correlation between having a calling orientation to journalism (or not) and responses to its destabilization. Thus, we followed a theoretical sampling approach (Strauss and Corbin, 1990) to recruit journalists representing both orientations by requesting that our pilot interviewees provide referrals for journalists who they believed either viewed journalism as a calling or did not, as research has suggested that others can discern a calling orientation (Cho and Jiang, 2022). We also purposefully sampled on age and tenure in journalism, as these factors might relate to different responses. Specifically, older journalists could be less comfortable with new technology (Friedberg, 2003). Given that technology is a major force transforming journalism, older journalists may find navigating the changes in their occupation to be more challenging. In addition, longer tenure in an occupation relates to stronger commitment to that occupation (Kaufman, 1982), which would also make it harder to navigate its destabilization. Thus, we recruited journalists of varying ages and tenures in newspaper journalism who either had to leave (i.e., were laid off) or felt compelled to leave their newspaper due to undesirable changes to and unattractive prospects for their occupation.

We recruited a total of 72 unemployed or former newspaper journalists (excluding the 12 pilot interviewees) in stage two. This sample was constructed from three sources. First, we snowball sampled from our pilot interviewees (N=34). Second, we posted a recruitment message on two online groups populated by journalists—one group on a popular social networking website and the other on a popular professional networking website (N=27). Finally, the first author joined networking events for journalists and found potential interviewees through attendees there (N=11). Our sample included 40 women and 32 men, whose ages ranged from 30 to 59 years (M=44.10, S.D.=8.39) and whose tenure in newspapers ranged from three to 39 years (M=18.00, S.D.=9.38). ¹ Their most recent positions in journalism included reporter, staff writer, editor, copy editor, columnist, and photojournalist. They hailed from 37 U.S. states. The majority of them (76 percent) had worked for at least two newspapers; they typically started at smaller community newspapers and moved on to larger regional, metropolitan, or national ones.

To examine consistency in these journalists’ narratives and how their responses to destabilization evolved over time, we conducted two waves of interviews with all 72 participants. The first and primary interviews were conducted during March and April 2016 (Time 1), and the second interviews were conducted five months later in August and September of 2016 (Time 2). ² We conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews guided by a protocol (see Online Appendix A). Six interviews were conducted in person and the rest by phone, as most interviewees were geographically distant from the authors. The interviews averaged 57 minutes (range of 50 to 160 minutes) at Time 1. Follow-up interviews at Time 2 averaged 23 minutes (range of 15 to 30 minutes). All interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. In the Time 1 interviews, we asked interviewees to describe their journey into and through journalism, to detail the factors that had led them to consider exiting journalism and entering different occupations (if applicable), and to share their emotions, thoughts, and behaviors regarding the experience of leaving or staying in journalism as well as the paths they had traveled since then. Time 2 interviews focused on their current work status and how their perceptions and experiences had unfolded or changed since the last interview. In all interviews, we probed for further elaboration as potentially important themes surfaced.

As we began analyzing the interviews, we found that whether journalists’ accounts suggested a calling orientation did not correspond precisely to different patterns of navigating occupational destabilization, and neither did characteristics such as age or tenure in journalism. Specifically, although interviewees who did not express a calling orientation toward journalism (N=12; 17 percent) showed similar responses to each other, those who did express a calling orientation (N=60; 83 percent) narrated two divergent patterns. ³ The two patterns were characterized by whether interviewees described the fundamental meaning of journalism as fixed solely in this occupation or as flexible and thereby plausibly existing in other occupations—an emerging theoretical concept we labeled “meaning fixedness” (discussed further below). To home in on refining the properties of these two patterns of responses to occupational destabilization, we again employed a theoretical sampling strategy in stage 3 (Strauss and Corbin, 1990). For part of this process, we specifically sought additional unemployed or former journalists who did not express a calling orientation toward journalism (N=8), as our earlier interviews suggested they tended to be low in meaning fixedness. This move was also intended to supplement the relatively smaller number of non-called journalists in our initial sample (i.e., N=12) to allow us to determine whether other patterns in meaning fixedness among the non-called would emerge. We conducted interviews until no new theoretical insights on meaning fixedness or other themes emerged, suggesting theoretical saturation (Strauss and Corbin, 1990). We added 22 interviewees to our initial sample of 72, growing our sample to 94.

Data Analysis

Since our knowledge based on previous research is likely to influence our interpretation of the data, we began data analysis by following grounded theory techniques with a postpositivist perspective, acknowledging the existence of our biased foci while seeking to minimize subjectivity (Strauss and Corbin, 1990). We began by reading and analyzing the transcripts separately, meeting weekly for two hours to compare the codes emerging in our independent reading of the data from sets of five to ten interviews each time, exchange insights, and discuss relevant literatures. While our data analysis process was iterative and nonlinear, for clarity we describe this process as unfolding in four roughly defined stages.

In the first stage, we read Time 1 transcripts separately to note potentially important themes, paying particular attention to coding interviewees’ cognitions, emotions, and behaviors as they described their experiences. Coding in this stage reflected in-vivo or descriptive coding (Locke, 2001), which involved labeling a section of text with single words or short phrases directly extracted from the transcript or closely describing its meaning. For example, interviewees described “feeling sad” about what happened to journalism and “feeling nervous” about the future. As we read, we were struck by a bifurcated pattern of interviewees’ accounts of their interpretations, emotions, and behaviors in the face of the changes they described. For example, in describing what journalism’s destabilization meant to them, one interviewee lamented, “It’s horrible. The worst part of it is the blow to self-esteem and self-worth” [9-Mfix], while another took a lighter approach, noting, “There are so many other things in the world that can use my skills and experience” [3-Mflex]. ⁴ We assigned to the former quote the in-vivo code “threatening self-esteem/self-worth” and to the latter “seeing opportunities in other things.”

In the second stage of data analysis, we reexamined and integrated our descriptive codes to form more-abstract codes. This stage reflects a process of axial coding (Strauss and Corbin, 1990; Locke, 2001). For example, we considered the descriptive codes “threatening self-esteem/self-worth” and “seeing opportunities in other things” to be interviewees’ views of leaving journalism as either a threat or an opportunity, which we later further abstracted to the theoretical category “interpreting occupational destabilization” given that the codes reflected different ways of interpreting the implications of journalism’s destabilization for one’s self and career. At this stage, our meetings became intensive discussions of the axial codes to use, focusing on resolving disagreements and generally discussing the plight of the journalists we interviewed.

In the third stage, we focused on delineating the two patterns of responses we observed among our interviewees and identifying their respective cognitive, emotional, and behavioral characteristics. This stage involved rereading the transcripts of interviewees demonstrating each pattern and reexamining the descriptive and abstract codes to construct a detailed description of the two kinds of responses to occupational destabilization. We also developed and refined theoretical categories to capture the content within each pattern of responses. For example, we first used the theoretical category of “sensemaking” but later changed it to “interpreting what destabilization means for the occupation and oneself” to more precisely reflect how journalists viewed the destabilization of their occupation differently.

Finally, we adopted a holistic view of all interviews while interpreting the meaning of and connections between our codes. We sought to construct an integrated theoretical understanding of interviewees’ responses. This reflected a shift to a constructivist perspective to assess how the theoretical categories fit into a cohesive framework (Charmaz, 2006) for us to “construct an image of a reality” (Charmaz, 2000: 523). We analyzed the variation within each theoretical category, identified patterns, and constructed connections across those variations to build and deepen our understanding of how the bifurcated responses to occupational destabilization unfolded and why. Across the four stages of data analyses, we went back and forth between our data and multiple research literatures in cognition, role transitions, and occupations (Strauss and Corbin, 1990). We performed all four stages of analysis with Time 1 data, using the second wave of data to supplement our findings and further validate our emerging theoretical model. We conducted member checks by explaining our model and core findings to ten interviewees who provided feedback on and validation of our model.

Beyond Calling: Two Paths of Navigating Occupational Destabilization

Many interviewees’ accounts suggested that they held a calling orientation toward journalism. Some used the term “calling” without prompting. As one put it, “I think in order to be a journalist, especially these days, you kind of have to be called to it, and that’s me. To me it’s a lot more of a calling than a profession and if you don’t have that passion then you’re not going to make it” [6-Mfix]. Another said,

I always knew I was going to be a journalist. I mean, even as a teenager I knew I was going to be a journalist. That was the only thing that I wanted to do. For me it was a calling. It was something that was important to our country that some people keep an eye on the political process and serve as a watchdog. I saw it as community building. I saw it as democracy protecting and I did see it as a calling. [44-Mflex]

Others did not specifically use “calling,” but their narratives strongly reflected a calling orientation. As one suggested, “I think it’s almost impossible for me not to do journalism. Even if there’s absolutely no other reward in the world for me other than the satisfaction of having done it; if there’s no financial payback for it or there’s no accolades for it I wouldn’t care; I would have to do journalism” [34-Mflex].

In contrast, some interviewees suggested that they enjoyed working as journalists but did not report feeling a sense of calling to this profession. For example, this interviewee compared herself to those who had a calling orientation: “I know a lot of people who go into journalism because they love it and are absolutely passionate about it. I mean, I like it too, but I’m definitely not one of them. I like that the work I did in journalism was a bit different every day and was fun, but there’s nothing more special than that” [61-Mflex].

Although we initially expected that having a calling orientation or not toward journalism would associate with different responses to its destabilization as previous research suggested (e.g., Wrzesniewski, 1999), it became increasingly clear during our analysis that some calling-oriented journalists’ responses resembled those of the non-calling-oriented, while others showed a markedly different pattern. Because the narratives of the former group suggested a sense that the meaning they derived from working in journalism could be found or cultivated in other occupations, we call this group flexible-meaning perceivers. In contrast, the latter group seemed to view the meaning of journalism as unavailable elsewhere and was thus labeled fixed-meaning perceivers. As we will describe, flexible- versus fixed-meaning perceivers showed different cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses, culminating in two paths of navigating occupational destabilization.

Interpreting the Destabilization of Journalism

Every journalist in our sample acknowledged that journalism had been undergoing severe destabilization. Without being prompted, most interviewees likened journalism to a sick or dying person, or compared the experience of seeing the occupation weakened to mourning the death of a loved one. These accounts reflected a great deal of negative emotion, which we analyze in a later section. As one put it,

It was very hard. It’s kind of like mourning. It was like my newspaper, my love, was like a relative that had, say, a terminal illness where you knew you couldn’t do anything about it and it was very bitter because it was just not—it didn’t have any life left in it and I couldn’t do anything about it. [22-Mfix]

Interviewees also noted the destructive changes to their work over time. Some who experienced undesired changes in their work likened their separation from journalism to a divorce, comparing journalism to an increasingly abusive spouse. As a journalist of 27 years recounted,

It is like a divorce. You know, you mourn. I cried. I cried not because the job itself was so great but because in the heyday, during the early days, journalism was so great. It is very much like when you leave a bad marriage and you know he was a great guy and in the beginning when it first started he was the love of your life, but towards the end of the marriage he was an asshole. You know, you mourn, not the man you are leaving, but the man you married. I was mourning the career that I married because I had intended to be in that career the rest of my life. [36-Mfix]

Although journalism’s destabilization was well recognized, how journalists interpreted its destabilization varied. Their accounts reflected a cognitive process in which they contemplated what the destabilization meant for journalism as an occupation and for themselves. Fixed- and flexible-meaning perceivers exhibited diverging patterns of interpretation.

Emotions About the Destabilization of Journalism

All interviewees described strong sadness about the destabilizing landscape of journalism, which evoked a profound sense of loss. They described a grieving process marked by struggle and the loss of a secure foothold in their beloved occupation. A journalist who had worked in newspapers for 26 years described the challenge:

You know, we are addicts and we can’t let go. You know, journalism is who we are in the very core of our DNA, and it really is revolutionary, and I am not using that word in an altruistic way. I mean it really is revolutionary, and to extricate yourself from all you have ever been, what you ever will be, you know, your whole identity and say, “Okay, I am 49 years old, I am going to be something else.” It has been. . . . It is quite like a loss . . . it really is, and you will hear this from other journalists as well, I am sure. [31-Mflex]

A sense of loss dominated their accounts, which were filled with negative emotions reflecting anger, emptiness, and depression. Interviewees reported feeling “heartbroken” [32-Mflex] and “devastated” [13-Mflex], “having an existential crisis and having to go see a psychiatrist to put me on medication” [10-Mfix], “resenting the managers and furious about the changes” [43-Mfix], and feeling “profound sadness, emptiness, hopelessness, and complete loss of purpose and self-esteem” [28-Mflex]. While every journalist reported negative feelings, notable differences emerged between fixed- and flexible-meaning perceivers in how their negative emotions changed in intensity, which seemed to follow their different interpretations of journalism’s destabilization.

Assessing the Portability of Journalism’s Work Components

Besides interpreting what journalism’s destabilization implied, journalists’ accounts reflected another cognitive process: assessing the portability of journalism’s specific work components, that is, whether journalists were able and willing to transfer the work components they deemed meaningful in journalism and apply them in other occupations. When asked about the parts of journalism they viewed as meaningful, all journalists noted several work components, which we classified into three groups, the first of which reflected the tasks of the work, the second its relational features, and the third its impact, a classification that corresponds to sources of meaning in work examined in previous research (cf. Wrzesniewski and Dutton, 2001; Rosso, Dekas, and Wrzesniewski, 2010). The task components referred to activities that journalists performed in their jobs, such as reading, learning, writing, reporting breaking news, taking photos, and going to interesting places. The relationship components comprised interactive aspects of the work, such as connecting with people by interviewing them and publicizing their stories, as well as working and socializing with fellow journalists. The impact components involved the mainly positive effects that journalists have on others. Our interviewees described improving people’s lives, especially lives of the marginalized, promoting democracy and social justice, benefiting communities and country, motivating social change, and contributing to society in general. Noticeably absent from their accounts of the meaningful work components were mentions of pay, status, power, or fame, suggesting that these did not define how they experienced meaningfulness in journalism, a broad consensus that might be attributed to journalism’s strong occupational culture (Ryfe, 2016). For example, one journalist described the work as being very meaningful to him because it combined the task, relationship, and impact components:

It is interesting work and it allowed me to be curious and learn about a variety of different topics. . . . I was on a special assignment after the Newtown school shooting covering the aftermath of that and was able to keep the public informed. . . . I had a really unique access to people. . . . It was compelling and it was essentially allowing me to continue my education, to remain curious, and to serve the community. [51-Mflex]

Another similarly noted,

It was hands-on and it was very practical writing . . . it got me close to people doing things that I felt were interesting . . . and when you get to touch somebody’s life, help people and when you get to help somebody that’s a lot of fun. . . . I’ve had a lot of moments like that where the information I delivered helped somebody, changed somebody’s life, changed something and that’s as . . . good as it gets. [11-Mfix]

Expecting journalism’s work components to maintain some meaning in other occupations, flexible-meaning perceivers described being able and willing to carry forward parts of what they did to make them useful for other occupations. However, fixed-meaning perceivers tightly rooted the meaning of these work components in journalism and appeared to be unable or unwilling to transfer them to different contexts. The perceived portability of work components expanded plausible career possibilities for the former group while limiting them for the latter.

Emotions About the Future

It is natural for workers in destabilized occupations to contemplate their future. While doing so, our interviewees reported negative emotions such as fear, nervousness, and worry due to the uncertainty involved at this critical moment in their career. In particular, fixed-meaning perceivers worried about not being able to sustain a living in journalism. One interviewee described the financial precariousness involved, likening the end of her work to the end of her life: “Every day I live in this uncertainty of whether I would be able to make money the next day. I am scared and nervous and kept thinking, okay, is it gonna be the end of my journalism career, the end of my life?” [36-Mfix]. Meanwhile, flexible-meaning perceivers were nervous about their occupational transitions. The words of this former journalist captured the stress: “You know for a month I was nervous and stressed about what I will do as my next career and how I’m gonna make the switch. I wouldn’t want to just do anything. . . . The feeling of uncertainty was overwhelming” [66-Mflex]. Such negative emotions remained or intensified for fixed-meaning perceivers but eased for flexible-meaning perceivers—diverging trajectories that seemed to follow their assessed portability of journalism’s work components.

Preserving vs. Reinventing

As their cognitive and emotional experiences unfolded in the wake of journalism’s destabilization, fixed- and flexible-meaning perceivers engaged in preserving and reinventing actions, respectively, as their ultimate behavioral responses. Nearly every fixed-meaning perceiver focused on preserving their work in journalism, either by freelancing or remaining unemployed while expanding their search for journalism jobs, sometimes living off of retirement funds to do so. Flexible-meaning perceivers chose, instead, to transfer work components in journalism to new occupations, reinventing aspects of their work in different contexts.

Toward a Model of Meaning Fixedness

In delineating the paths taken by fixed- versus flexible-meaning perceivers, we also sought to abstract from our findings and theorize how these two paths emerged and why they unfolded in their respective patterns. As suggested by the labels we used, we propose that underlying these two paths was a distinctive individual-level perception reflecting the extent to which one views the meaning of work components in the occupation as fixed or flexible—a theoretical concept we term meaning fixedness, inspired by the construct of functional fixedness originally developed by Karl Duncker (1945). Functional fixedness refers to a cognitive tendency that limits a person’s ability to think about or use an object in any way other than how it is traditionally used, such that an orange is only a fruit to be eaten, not a ball with which to play catch (Duncker, 1945; Adamson, 1952; McCaffrey, 2012). Consistent with this definition, meaning fixedness captures a tendency to view the components of work as meaningful only in a particular occupation and as meaningless if transferred, in part or whole, to a different occupation. We argue that the high versus low level of meaning fixedness characterizing the fixed- versus flexible-meaning perceivers, respectively, explains their strikingly different cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses to occupational destabilization. Drawing on our findings, we construct a model of meaning fixedness in the navigation of occupational destabilization, presented in Figure 2.

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Figure 2.

A Model of Meaning Fixedness and Individual Responses to Occupational Destabilization

Our findings show that fixed- and flexible-meaning perceivers differ in how they interpret the meaning of their occupation’s destabilization and in how they assess the portability of the occupation’s work components. We suggest that meaning fixedness can direct individuals toward both interpreting the destabilization and assessing the portability of work components in particular ways. Specifically, high levels of meaning fixedness seem to fixate people’s focus on justifying the destabilized occupation’s importance and its continued career viability, as their work seems meaningful only when performed in this occupation. In contrast, low meaning fixedness can free people to see in the destabilized occupation clear signs of change and decreased career viability. Similarly, high meaning fixedness can render people less able or willing to transfer relevant work components to other occupational contexts, as to them, these work components would carry little to no meaning outside of the destabilized occupation. In contrast, with low meaning fixedness, people report a belief that the same work components can hold meaning elsewhere, making them more able and willing to transfer components to other occupations.

The cognitive responses we describe, characterized by their respective patterns of interpreting the destabilization of the occupation and assessing the portability of its work components, reflect people’s understandings of and beliefs about what is happening to their occupation. As we show in our findings, people take striking emotional journeys as they develop an understanding of the destabilization of their occupation. The experience of occupational destabilization is negative, involving emotions of sadness and despair that often accompany a sense of loss as people grapple with the implications of the changes to their occupation. People also experience the emotions at a more personal level regarding what destabilization means for their future. The fear and nervousness described universally by our participants about their path forward in the midst of destabilization reflect an understanding that their work—as it had been—is under threat.

While occupational destabilization brings universally negative emotions, we suggest that meaning fixedness influences both the intensity and, sometimes, the content of these emotions. With high meaning fixedness, a focus on justifying the destabilized occupation’s continued importance and career viability seems to sustain or even intensify individuals’ negative emotions about their plight. Low meaning fixedness yields more acceptance of the occupation’s deterioration, helping to attenuate negative emotions over time. Moreover, feeling unable or unwilling to transfer work components from the destabilized occupation sustains or intensifies people’s negative emotions about their future, keeping them stuck in a cycle of fear about what will become of them. In contrast, feeling able and willing to transfer work components to a new occupation attenuates people’s negative emotions over time, even giving rise to positive emotions such as hope about the future. We suggest that these contrasting emotional trajectories are, in turn, likely to bolster individuals’ respective cognitive responses (although our data do not directly indicate this), as emotions and cognitions mutually reinforce each other (Lazarus, 1982; Pessoa, 2008). The reinforcing cycle of cognition and emotion as people interpret, assess, and feel deeply about their plight is rooted in whether they see the meaning of their occupation as something that can be broken apart and carried forward or as something that is sacred and whole and cannot be deserted.

Finally, the cognitive and emotional responses we describe propel people to undertake different behavioral responses. Believing in the destabilized occupation’s continued importance and career viability, as well as viewing its work components as fixed, encourages people to engage in actions to preserve their career in the destabilizing occupation. In contrast, when people no longer see the same level of importance and career viability of the destabilized occupation, and when they believe its work components can be applied elsewhere, they engage in actions to reinvent their career, striving to carry components of the work forward as they make transitions to other occupations. The emotions associated with each path are likely to facilitate the corresponding behavioral responses as well. Sustained or intensified despair, sadness, and fear will keep people clinging to what remains of the occupation, making sometimes desperate efforts to stay viable in it. Abating negative emotions and the emergence of hope unlock energy and the potential to move toward a new future, thus facilitating moving on to new occupational homes. In short, we suggest meaning fixedness as the underlying thread that sets in motion different cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses to occupational destabilization.

Theoretical Contributions

Our study contributes to research on occupations, the meaning of work, job loss, and role transitions, as well as to our understanding of individual perceptions and cognition in general.

Practical Implications

The impact of new technology on work is immense and pervasive. Some predict that the rise of artificial intelligence and the use of robots at work will result in massive unemployment and severe social problems (Ford, 2015). Others hold that robots will free people from tedious tasks to instead focus on work that is interesting and more suited for the market (Brynjolfsson and McAfee, 2014). Whether the changes are positive or negative, as blue- and white-collar occupations undergo drastic changes due to technological advancement, many people will navigate change or displacement, which will necessitate adapting within a workplace, finding new employment, or retraining for new occupations (Ford, 2015). Our research suggests that when designing programs to support these individuals, practitioners should consider the meaning of their destabilized occupations. Understanding meaning fixedness can help practitioners to better equip people for successful transitions. By realizing how meaning fixedness influences one’s ability to enact reinventing behaviors, organizations and practitioners can try to identify separable components of work that are most meaningful, building a bridge to help capture some of those in new occupations.

Our findings may also generalize to more common types of changes at work such as promotions, demotions, or lateral work role changes. When moving employees across positions, managers often focus solely on their skills, experiences, and performance in prior roles (Peter and Hull, 1969). Yet, an ostensibly favorable change may bring undesirable outcomes. Research has shown that both nurses and subway drivers felt unable to make a tangible impact on individuals after being promoted to managerial roles (Leana and Kossek, 2012; Bourmault and Anteby, 2020). Our study suggests that when moving employees to new positions, managers should also consider employees’ ability and desire to manage the changes in meaning across positions. In addition, meaning fixedness may influence how well employees perform in their new roles, as employees with higher meaning fixedness are likely to be more attached to the values and norms of their prior role, which could create cognitive baggage that hampers performance (Dokko, Wilk, and Rothbard, 2008; Dokko and Jiang, 2017). Organizations may benefit from offering career paths that accommodate different pursuits of meaning.

Limitations and Future Research

Our study was based on the retrospective accounts of interviewees, making recall bias or post-action justification a concern (Baron, Burton, and Hannan, 1996). The fact that many of our interviewees had already left their organizations could influence how they described the meaning of their destabilized occupation, motivating them to describe the work as more precious and of deeper value than they otherwise might, reflecting a sense of nostalgia for what was lost, an influence documented in prior research (Routledge et al., 2011; Routledge et al., 2012; Zhou et al., 2012; Batcho, 2013). Although retrospective accounts are likely to differ from individuals’ narratives taken in the midst of the kinds of navigation we have studied, they have been effectively used to study the dynamics of callings and identity changes over time in other occupations (Maitlis, 2009, 2012; Schabram and Maitlis, 2017). We tried to address the concern of recall bias by using a longitudinal research design in this study. Eleven interviewees had left their last journalism job less than two weeks before our first interview, allowing us to examine their narratives as time passed. The other interviewees had left their last journalism job more than a month before our first interview, yet their narratives about the meaning they attached to journalism were consistent in both waves of our interviews. Further, we argue that for the purpose of this study, retrospective narratives may play a more important role than contemporaneous narratives in influencing individuals’ future actions, as they reflect the more ingrained and salient parts of their experience and perceptions. However, future studies that compare how retrospective versus contemporaneous narratives shape future actions are needed.

We were unable to identify the specific antecedents to meaning fixedness given the nature of our study and our non-random sample. However, we conducted exploratory quantitative analyses to examine whether meaning fixedness might be related to certain demographic and personal characteristics. We did not find significant differences in gender; educational background and tenure in journalism; or marital, parental, and primary earner status of interviewees with high versus low levels of meaning fixedness (see Online Appendix G for results). Other unexamined variables could also influence the patterns we found. For example, individuals’ level of success in journalism and the status of their past journalistic outlets may relate to meaning fixedness and whether they engage in preserving or reinventing actions. We attempted to explore these relationships by quantifying journalists’ achievements and their employers’ status, using the coverage size of the largest newspaper they had worked for (i.e., whether it had community, regional, or national coverage), given that interviews with journalists in our supplemental sample suggested that the coverage size of a journalist’s newspaper employer is a good indicator of the journalist’s competence and the newspaper’s status. We found no significant difference in employer’s coverage size between journalists with higher versus lower meaning fixedness and between those engaging in preserving versus reinventing actions. We suggest two possible reasons for this. First, most interviewees expressed a sense of pride and confidence in their ability to do high-quality journalism work. The shared subjective feelings of success and achievement they displayed suggested that their objective level of success might be less important than this subjective experience (Dobrow, 2004; Dobrow and Heller, 2015). Second, the majority of interviewees had experiences in both smaller community newspapers and larger regional or national ones, yet in their accounts they focused primarily on the work they did, with little mention of the setting or status of their previous employers. This preoccupation with the work itself rather than its trappings has been identified in prior research as a major characteristic of individuals holding a calling orientation to their work (Wrzesniewski et al., 1997). A small number of journalists in our sample worked for elite newspapers (e.g., The New York Times, The Washington Post), and their accounts focused heavily on journalism and little, if at all, on employer status. Nevertheless, we encourage future research to more systematically examine the role of occupational and organizational status, as well as other factors, in individuals’ responses to occupational destabilization.

With our interview-based, qualitative data, we were only able to demonstrate meaning fixedness as a two-level categorical construct relating to two broad sets of individual reactions to occupational destabilization. However, meaning fixedness is likely a continuous variable with the potential to generate more-varied experiences and outcomes. For example, having a measure of the full range of meaning fixedness might predict individuals’ perceived meaningfulness of their new occupations and the particular strategies they adopt to obtain or craft (Wrzesniewski and Dutton, 2001) a sense of meaning in their new occupations. Meaning fixedness of employees and leaders might also affect outcomes related to creativity and adaptability, such as entrepreneurial success and organizational change. We encourage future research to examine these possibilities.

Finally, our research is based on a context in which the occupation is in decline, with a rapidly decreasing number of positions. Our findings and model may not apply squarely to people navigating occupations that are destabilized but not in decline, that is, occupations that are disrupted but whose existence is not threatened, such as surgeons confronting skill disruption in the U.S. (Zetka, 2003; Beane, 2019) or doctors facing stigmatization in China (Wang, Raynard, and Greenwood, 2021). We consider decline as a major way through which occupational destabilization manifests. Other manifestations may include the content of work changing unfavorably when new policies are implemented or technology altering the design of work (Cohen, 2012; Beane, 2019). Regardless of their manifestation, changes associated with occupational destabilization are likely to cause individuals to reassess their occupation and career. Specifically, destabilization is an occasion when the salience of the work’s meaning and its fixed or flexible nature should guide how individuals respond. We suggest that our model would apply whenever individuals experience undesirable—or perhaps even desirable—changes in their occupation and when these changes prompt them to reexamine their working lives. People in occupations that are not declining would perhaps be less likely to question the viability of maintaining a career there, when interpreting the implications of their destabilization. To examine this proposition, future research should study members of occupational contexts in which destabilization does not involve decline.

Conclusion

We found that when confronted with their occupation’s destabilization, individuals manifest one of two responses. Some recognize flexibility in the meaning of work components in their occupation and can apply these components in a different setting, often in new ways. Others become defenders, striving to guard the territory and preserve the purity of their occupation, even persisting in extremely tenuous work arrangements or in no work arrangement at all. At the core of our finding is that meaning fixedness underpins individuals’ cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses in the face of occupational destabilization. As societal, technological, and other external forces continue to shape the occupational landscape, understanding individual meaning fixedness can shed new light on ways to create fulfilling work lives for people forced to confront destructive changes at work or, worse, to leave the work they love.