The influence of spiritual “meaning‐making” on career behavior

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a participative psycho‐biographical study that investigated the effect of spirituality on career behavior. This study shows that spirituality influences career purpose, sense‐making and coherence. Spirituality was found to inspire four purposes of “developing and becoming self”, “unity with others”, “expressing self”, and “serving others”. Spirituality was also found to influence an ongoing process of sense‐making through discovering, prioritizing and balancing the four purposes over a lifespan, in response to ongoing tensions between “being” and “doing” as well as “self‐ versus other‐orientation”. Spirituality furthermore influences perceived career‐coherence as individuals align their careers with perceived spiritual orderings outside of themselves. The paper concludes with suggestions for practice and future research.