Self-Actualizing and Self-Transcending in a World of Less Available Work

In a time of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), with an anticipated world of much less available work, due diligence requires that people identify what needs of theirs are met via work ideally in a pre-4IR sense and then to revamp their lives based on partial work, complements, and substitutions, to ensure that their needs are completely met. This work uses a six-level version of Maslow's hierarchy of needs focused on what work enables for people, beyond survival needs. This follow-on work explores how the prior research may be applied to mapping an individual's needs, identifying what needs are met via work, and then exploring potential complements and substitutions, in a practical walk-through. The focus is particularly on needs beyond survival ones, and especially on the top two levels of the hierarchy of needs for self-actualization and self-transcendence (both of which enable personal definitions of what those mean).

The Positive Face of Human Capital, Psychological Capital, and Well-Being

This chapter analyzes the relation between Positive Psychology, Psychological Capital, and Well-Being. Positive psychology pursues information that flourishes on life. Positive psychology improves the quality of life and investigates the paths towards positive individual characteristics and developing communities through actions that increase well-being and prevents discomfort in situations where life is vicious and meaningless. Psychological capital is associated with many positive results for employees and the organization and promises to increase productivity in today's workplace. In this chapter, the transformation of positive psychology into the concept of psychological capital is explained in the field of organizational behavior, and the state of well-being and psychological capital are examined from a theoretical perspective. Besides, it is explained how psychological capital improves employee wellbeing. Psychological capital and well-being are very effective concepts on employee workplace performance, and there are strong relationships between them.

Pervasive Technologies and Addiction

Digital media have drastically changed occupational landscapes. Mobile technologies in particular enable employees to work anywhere at any time. Consequently, expectations for when and when not to work have become increasingly uncertain. This chapter focuses on how self-proclaimed workaholics of Workaholics Anonymous (WA) rely on social support. Through participant observation and thematic textual analysis, the author examines the symbolic interactions that shape members' recoveries. A grounded theory analysis of the data reveals how members reconstruct their work habits through introspective reflection, interpersonal dialogue, and communal sense-making. Drawing from a structuration perspective (Giddens, 1979), the author interprets how these findings can be explored in future research and applied by individuals facing personal and occupational pressures associated with work.

Swapping Avocation for Vocation

If subsistence were not a factor, in a time of less available work, a simple shift for human lifestyles would be from vocation to avocation, such as serious hobby and skilled leisure activities. As expressed in the West, avocations can be all-consuming: expensive, time-intensive, resource-intensive, skilled, long-term, sophisticated, pro-social, and self-affirming. In many cases, serious leisure activities may result in skillsets that are near-professional in status and scope. Some people practice as amateurs (and novices) in various professional fields, as citizen practitioners and citizen scientists. This work offers a conceptual exploration of the affordances and constraints of expansive serious hobbies and skilled leisure activities to stand-in for full work participation.

Abstracting Transnational Celebrity (and Sell) on a Social Video Sharing Platform

The rise of social video sharing internationally has enabled talented individuals to share user-generated video contents that attract audiences (viewers who engage in “views”) and followers (“subscribers” to the channel) and enable income generation as “influencers” (once a particular threshold of an audience population has been reached). Such individuals usually promote particular interests, whether these are commercial markets or political entities. The cultivating of a transnational image and the making of an international celebrity require some foundational approaches. From the collection of videos shared by a young American artist/illustrator and social influencer, this work abstracts insights about the strategies and tactics behind the making of transnational celebrity based on both empirics and abductive logic.

Digital Making

In the same way there are generic physical “maker spaces,” people may benefit from having access to digital maker spaces to generate various types of contents for sharing. These may involve contents for intercommunications, artful expression, storytelling, socializing, teaching, learning, research, entertainment, social change, political activism, and other endeavors. Expanding digital making may provide channels for human exploration and creativity and social interchanges, while limiting their consumption of common hobbyist physical materials (wood, paper, metals, and other consumables). This work explores some necessary and desirable features of open online studio spaces for digital making.

How and Why Is Work Meaningful (Beyond Survival Needs)?

To understand the concerns about how humanity, writ large, may react to lessened availability of work, it may help to explore how and why work is meaningful to people, beyond subsistence and survival. This work involves the exploration of the academic literature for how and why work is meaningful, based on issues of human identities, self-actualization, self-expression, sociality, and other aspects. This work sets a baseline against which future substitutions for human needs-meeting may be achieved beyond work in a projected future.

A Product System for Meaningful Work, Rehabilitation, and Social Well-Being in Correctional Contexts

This chapter explores the benefits of making as a tool for corrective rehabilitation, education and social wellbeing. Through a design-led research approach the team developed a new product system as part of a University Industry Collaboration (UIC) project with the manufacturing division of an adult correctional facility. The UIC research involved a formative study of four correction centres to determine capabilities with respect to the available technology and expertise. A new product system incorporating simple high-quality components was designed, enabling repeatable, industry compatible processes and universal access for a fluctuating labour force. Significantly, the research demonstrates that continued collaboration between university-based product design research units and manufacturing systems in correctional facilities should adopt a strategic approach to the development of products and practices. The research develops a series of principles for part and assembly design that we consider encourage positive educational and meaningful social well-being outcomes.

Societal-Level Cross-Functional Matrix Management

The challenges around adapting to social ecosystems with less work, in a time of a disruptive Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), may be partially mitigated with a macro societal-level matrix management approach, with artificial-intelligence support. This concept suggests that human workers may engage with various cross-functional teams on various projects, so they would have both a basic supervisor based on function, and various other project leads to whom they report in a dotted-line way. This work highlights how this structure aligns with contemporary work culture and technologies and explores some possible implications of this approach.

Automation and Augmentation

This chapter examines the nature of work where human labor is a complement to machines and considers its import for social wellbeing. While dominant portrayals about the effects of work automation are often characterized by discourses of fear and hype, these have limited utility. The chapter proposes moving beyond fear and hype to consider the ways in which automation alters the organization of work and the human role. It asserts that, although essential, the human role in automation is often obscured. Drawing on the concepts of “fauxtomation,” “heteromation,” and human infrastructures, the chapter makes visible hidden forms of human labor in automated work and maintains that a positive strategy for social well-being is the recognition and revaluation of human work in automated processes.