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Abstract
Meaningfulness in the workplace is a well-known topic in organizational science, but understanding how meaningfulness is related to mortality awareness, as suggested by existentialist philosophers, remains unexamined. The current study examined the impact that mortality awareness may have on work behaviors in a death salient occupation (i.e., substance-abuse counseling). The effects of death reflection, calling work orientation, and mentoring were explored using hierarchical multiple regression analyses. Results found a significant three-way interaction effect of death reflection, calling, and mentoring on task performance. Simple slopes analyses showed the relationship between death reflection and task performance was positive when calling and mentoring were high and negative when calling was high but mentoring was low. Several theoretical implications and directions for future research are discussed.