The master’s thesis presents the concepts of meaningful work, external and internal work motivation and connection between them. I investigated how researches from different fields like psychology, philosophy and organizational psychology understood concepts of meaningful work, meaning, meaning of life, motivation, engagement. The aim of the thesis was to review the concept of meaningfulness of work as a specific construct and how it relates to motivation at work. During the research, I translated The Work and Meaning Inventory (WAMI; Steger et al., 2012) into the Slovenian language and implemented it in the second step of the research. During which I studied essential differences in understanding meaningful work connected with work motivation in groups of workers who are employed in public and private sectors. I also used Work Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation Scale (WEIMS; Gagné and Deci, 2005), that is based on self-determination theory. 349 people cooperated during the adaptation of The Work and Meaning Inventory (WAMI; Steger et al., 2012). In the second part of my research I carried out 2 focus groups in which 10 men, 14 women participated. Results demonstrated that employees in the different sectors understand meaningful work differently, that depends on the nature of their work, experiences, communication at the work place and with management. In both groups I discovered that meaningful work is more connected to the internal or internalized motivation rather than with external one. Financial view of the work was proved to be more important for the workers from the private sector. Employees in public sector emphasized communication and feedback from management and pupils.
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