Mattering is an indicator of organizational health and employee success

ABSTRACT

Mattering, one’s sense of the difference one makes in the world, has been variously described in psychological and philosophical literatures. We propose the experience of mattering is tied to the perceived impact of one’s actions and is best understood as an action-oriented, context-dependent construct. We introduce the Organizational Mattering Scale (OMS) for measuring mattering in organizations. Across four studies, factor analysis revealed a general mattering factor and two sub-factors, recognition and achievement (CFI = .98, RMSEA = .06). Construct validity and predictive validity are established across a range of psychological and organizational measures. Notably, OMS scores were more related to self-efficacy than self-esteem (p < .01), and positively related to key business outcomes, including job satisfaction (r = .51, p < .01), having a leadership role (t = 6.91, p < .01), recent promotions (t = 2.26, p < .05) and retention (r = .31, p < .01).

KEYWORDS:

• Mattering
• self-efficacy
• organizational health
• future of work
• employee thriving

Disclosure statement

All of the authors on the paper who do not list their affiliation as “BetterUp” were at one point paid invitees to a small workshop, where we convened to discuss the topic of the paper (organizational mattering).  All of the BetterUp-affiliated authors are paid full-time employees at BetterUp.  The concept and methods were jointly conceived of by all the authors.  As this was intended from the outset as a scientific collaboration, and the results of the paper do not position BetterUp to profit or gain in any material sense, we do not feel the fact that the authors were paid by the sponsoring institution constitutes a worrisome conflict of interest.

Notes

1. In ancient Greece, kleos meant songs that were sung of one’s deeds – this was meant in a literal sense and the term is sometimes even translated as ‘acoustic renown’ (Svenbro, 1993; Watson, 2016).

2. O’Brien (1996) actually used work as an example of how mattering is generally framed in a positive context: ‘To achieve excellence in my work is very important to me’ (p. 341).

3. But see Gardner and Pierce (1998), a study of 186 workers at a Midwestern U.S. electrical company. While they found positive relationships between self-efficacy, job satisfaction and performance, they found self-esteem to be a stronger predictor than self-efficacy among this sample.

4. Self-esteem, by comparison, also demonstrated a positive relationship with performance, but by being tied to affective, rather than motivational, traits (Chen et al., 2004).

5. See Chan et al. (2014) for a review of existing mattering scales, also Jung (2018).

6. Construct validation analyses are explored in-depth in Results: Phase 4.

7. Given the small sample and exploratory nature of this initial round of data collection, formal reporting of factor-analytic statistical criteria are omitted; see Results: Phase 2 for a fuller treatment.

8. Scoring for the OMS consists of a set of weighted sums: items in the recognition and achievement sub-dimensions are weighted by their factor loadings, and the general mattering dimension is scored via a weighted sum of the two sub-dimensions. See Appendix B for scoring specifics.

9. Job satisfaction data (n = 569) was collected in Phase 2 (exploratory factor analysis phase), but it is reported here as it is topically related to other Phase 4 measures of organizational predictive validity.

10. Considering the correlational nature of these data, it is, of course, possible that becoming a manager or getting a promotion is itself the cause of feeling one matters via recognition for one’s accomplishments. Our emphasis is on establishing the associations between mattering and these organizational outcomes; with this groundwork laid, future research may work towards establishing causality.