Work in organizations is increasingly measured and evaluated by digital data. While this wave of datafication is restructuring our work and organizations, little is known about its implications to work meaningfulness. Work meaningfulness has been argued to be one of the most important themes in organization studies, since it can be seen as a fundamental human need. With a qualitative approach, we define work meaningfulness as a sense of doing both personally and socially significant work. We draw on 55 interviews with journalists, whose work is an extreme example of datafication, since their individual performance is constantly evaluated by real-time audience metrics data. Our study illustrates, that when numeric data either validate or devalue work, work meaningfulness becomes constantly negotiated against it. Two opposing pathways to work meaningfulness emerged: either aligning work meaningfulness with data or disconnecting meaningfulness from it. Most journalists were left in ambivalence, situationally switching between the two pathways, whereas some were able to achieve a more stable state of work meaningfulness. Both pathways came with dysfunctional outcomes which can impair individuals’ well-being, organizational collaboration and belongingness.
