This study examines how firms and their representatives manage employee meaning in the context of corporate volunteering. Through interviews with managers overseeing corporate volunteering initiatives, we analyze the complexities of meaning management. Our findings indicate that managing meaning, along the associated disparities between firm and employee conceptualizations of what constitutes meaningful corporate volunteering, presents a tension-driven endeavor for those in charge of corporate volunteering. We reveal various types of tensions that may occur from competing or contradicting demands on corporate volunteering stemming from external circumstances, or from the ways how firms internally organize their programs. We further outline how firm’s representatives respond to these tensions to manage meaning in ways that satisfy both their firms and participating employees. By developing a framework for identifying and characterizing tensions in meaning management across different corporate volunteering stages, our study sheds light on the complexities managers face when attempting to align companies’ purpose with individual conceptualizations of finding meaning in corporate volunteering.
