This research examines how the hero's journey narrative framework influences employees' meaning-making processes in workplace contexts. While existing research has established relationships between work experiences and perceived meaning, the role of narrative frameworks in this process remains understudied. Drawing on narrative identity theory and dialogical self-theory, we propose that hero's journey narratives moderate the relationship between work experiences and meaning of work, particularly for negative experiences. Three studies were conducted to test this proposition. Study 1 analyzed employees' natural work narratives, revealing that those who incorporated more hero's journey elements maintained higher levels of work meaning despite negative experiences. Study 2 employed an experimental design to test a hero's journey narrative intervention, demonstrating its effectiveness in buffering the impact of negative work events on meaning. Study 3 examines the sustainability of narrative interventions through a longitudinal design across a work quarter, providing insights into how repeated narrative framing affects meaning construction over time. The findings suggest that hero's journey narratives can serve as effective cognitive tools for maintaining work meaning, particularly during challenging periods. This research extends our understanding of workplace meaning construction by identifying narrative frameworks as important moderating mechanisms and demonstrating how archetypal narratives can be effectively applied in organizational contexts. These findings have implications for how organizations might support employee meaning-making through narrative-based interventions, while offering new theoretical perspectives on the relationship between work experiences and meaning construction. The research also provides methodological contributions through its multi-method approach to studying narrative effects in organizational settings.
