LAUSR

Although framed under the title “Work: What Is It Good For? : : :” Mumby’s (2019) article is ultimately providing an answer to a different question, mainly how particular macrolevel factors at the political, economic, and societal level affect the way people relate to work, and how the role and experience of work has changed historically. Within the field of industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology, we have a long tradition of examining how employees experience work through the study of work design, which pertains to the content and organization of one’s work tasks, activities, relationships, and responsibilities (Parker, 2014). As researchers who have, in recent years, sought to redirect attention to the relatively untapped question about the contextual influences on work design, albeit from a distinct theoretical perspective, we welcome Mumby’s analysis. At the same time, we argue that Mumby provides a partial analysis of the influences that shape work, and we disagree with his apparent conclusion that, given current sociopolitical trends, work is irreparably damaged. We assert that the influence of sociopolitical systems on work is not deterministic because first, sociopolitical factors interact with other multilevel factors, and second, because decisions at various intermediary levels influence how macrolevel effects trickle down to shape individual work experiences. The overview of our research journey in this area provides a more nuanced, and ultimately more optimistic, perspective. We build on an earlier analysis by Holman, Clegg, and Waterson (2002), which identified three main paradigmatic perspectives on work design (i.e., functionalism, interpretivism, and critical theory) and concluded that despite their fundamental differences, these perspectives all seek to answer some fundamental questions around the questions “How do jobs get to be the way they are?”; “What are the roles, motives, and values of the various actors in these processes, and how do they exert power?”; and “What are the impacts of new technologies and new working practices on work design?” We use these questions to organize our commentary.