THE other day, I overheard an exchange between two women in a bus.

One woman volunteered that her daughter had begun working after graduating from college, and this naturally elicited an inquiry into the nature of her job.

The mother said the daughter works with a bank, and the other woman immediately commented it was a "good job," followed by conjecture that as a bank employee, she must be earning something to a tune of 10,000 yuan (US$1,587) a month.

When the mother disclosed she was making about 3,000 yuan, the news was met first with disbelief, and after much explanation, it dawned on the second woman that even in a bank there was a difference between the well-paid elites, and the indifferently compensated coolies.

Their conversation then turned to the importance of guanxi (connections) in getting a really good job.

Throughout their exchange, never once did they mention if the job suits the girl, or whether the girl likes the job.

Thirty years ago, few would regard employment with a bank with much admiration. At that time, there was no "wealth management," and stealing savers' money could mean long imprisonment.

Given the daily drudgery and the risks associated with monetary affairs, even teaching was held in more esteem than employment with a bank.

But as money plays an ever greater role in our national life, the money changers are asserting their importance. Today it is hard to think of a job more dignified and more sought-after than being a financial professional.

Gone are the hairsplitting ideological differences and bickering, and we find everything can be so easily characterized when seen through the prism of money.

With money as the great discriminator, we can now easily identify a good specialty, a good job, a good wife or a good husband, a worthy official, or a promising scholar.

There is nothing too sacred to be submitted to the litmus test of lucre.

Karl Marx described alienation as the systemic result of living in a socially stratified society.

In the capitalist society, he said, although the worker is an autonomous, self-realized human being, as an economic entity, he or she is directed to goals and diverted to activities that are dictated by the bourgeoisie, who own the means of production, in order to extract from the worker the maximum amount of surplus value.

Ironically, today, Marx's "Das Kapital" - his hefty volumes on political economy - has been adapted into a Chinese musical, "complete with catchy tunes and nifty footwork," and served up as entertainment for the new rich, according to one media comment.

Though we have no idea if Marx would be a box office hit, his alienation theory still gives a penetrating analysis of the plight of modern industrialized workers.

Cost of profits

According to "The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work" by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, your "emotions, perceptions and motivation" constitute your inner work life, which greatly affects your "creativity, productivity, work commitment and collegiality."

They believe that "Of all the positive events that influence inner work life, the single most powerful is progress in meaningful work."

Unfortunately, just as an employee's worth is decided by his earning power, our society at large also tends to assess the prestige of an employer by its market value.

We are sometimes so mesmerized by the success of a company's power at turning a good profit, that we often fail to see the human costs thereof.

By comparison, it has been noted by some scholars that in Japan employers sometimes make a tacit lifelong commitment to the livelihood of their employees, often in spite of corporate profits.

By all accounts, Japan's much deplored "Lost Decade" was a gainer for employees who could have been easily sacrificed in countries that have more faith in the market credo.

Explicating the meaning of work life is not easy. In order to assess positive and negative work environments, the authors have based their findings on daily diary entries from 238 people working in three industries at seven different companies.

The authors obviously intend to, in line with the fashionable intellectual penchant for mathematical rigor, reduce something as chaotic and inscrutable as motivation into something palpable and measurable.

The book does come up with some important insights into what makes more motivated employees, though it fails to give us a satisfactory answer as to what constitute a meaningful job.

This question could be answered not by employees or employers, but by detached, disinterested observers.

Recently nearly one hundred scholars addressed a petition to the Chinese Academy of Engineering to revoke the membership of Xie Jianping, a recently elected tobacco expert specializing in the study of tar reduction in cigarettes.

They claim this is pseudoscience aimed at encouraging smoking.

My question is: are these petitioners all blameless in their own field of studies? Does the academy have motor experts focused on designing more "fuel efficient" cars to encourage people to drive? Do they have chemists whose research products are polluting our habitat?

Alienation

How does the nicotine in cigarettes compare with the poison produced by cars and chemical plants?

Given such complications, the authors are well advised to concentrate on how to ignite engagement and creativity at work.

As they claim, "As inner work life goes, so goes the company."

"Inner work life" captures "the confluence of perceptions, emotions and motivations that individuals experience as they react to and make sense of the events of their workday," they write.

Motivation takes three forms: "Extrinsic motivation" inspires people to work in order to get a payoff, like a paycheck, recognition or a promotion.

"Intrinsic motivation" impels staff members to make an effort because they enjoy the job itself, while "relational or altruistic motivation" drives people to participate or collaborate because they want to help others and connect with their coworkers.

A highly motivated employee can be more creative and productive, evincing more commitment and team spirit.

People are apt to say "It's business, not personal."

As the authors have demonstrated, when jobs have been robbed of personal meaning, few employees are able to work hard.

A negative environment saps creativity and estranges employees emotionally from their work, as employee motivation becomes solely extrinsic.

Employees just put in time to collect their paycheck.

Changing that situation calls for not just the managerial skills on the part of the employers, as the authors imply.

The state should weigh in too, by creating more meaningful jobs, not just work.