The Brazilian Scientific Production on Sense and Meaning of Work: Review of Use of Terminology and Current Thematic Classifications

Abstract

This paper presents a review of the Brazilian scientific literature on the sense and meaning of work, in order to identify the researchers’ use of terminology and the branches of research on the subject. We examine a corpus of 70 papers electronically retrieved from databases for psychology and related fields through software-aided content analysis. The studies on the sense and meaning of work have primarily been developed since the year 2000, especially in the field of psychology. Most of these studies have a qualitative aspect and rely on a wide variety of distinct theoretical perspectives. These perspectives can be understood through four categories of terminological use: exclusive use of meaning of work; exclusive use of sense of work; use of both meaning and sense of work; and no identifiable or unique terminological preference.