Meaning Fulfilment – An Existential Approach to Transformative Change

Meaningful living and working are increasingly important for modern people. Alongside this search for meaning, many find themselves anxious, even desperate, not only about their own futures but also about the fate of our planet. These existential concerns are intensified by ecological and moral states of emergency, manifested in biodiversity loss, climate change, overconsumption, ideological and societal polarization (IPBES; Planetary Boundaries; JMS 2026). This presentation focuses on the logotheoretic concept of ‘meaning fulfilment’ as an alternative view for understanding motivation and human behavior, and thereby implementing transformative change. Logotheory is a meta-psychology combining being human and meaningful existence (Frankl 1953; 2010; 2021). It is developed by Viktor Frankl (1905–1997), who is regarded as the pioneer of the scholarly meaning research (King & Hicks 2021; Steger 2019). As an existential approach building on early phenomenologists’ value-realism, logotheory regards the human ‘will to meaning’ as the motivational impetus of a mature adult and ‘meaning fulfilment’ as the final goal of human life (DuBois 1993; Frankl 2010). However, Frankl does not specify what ‘meaning fulfilment’ consists of, but the information is scattered throughout his writings. Based on a hermeneutic in-depth reading of Frankl’s works, this presentation introduces a process of ‘meaning fulfilment’ and proposes it as a meta-level motivational basis for meaningful action needed amidst today’s ecological crisis and societal polarization. Further, from the logotheory perspective, values and value-apprehension represent undertheorized areas in contemporary research on meaningfulness (Salo 2025). This includes the domain of ‘meaningful work’, which has recently discovered Frankl’s ideas and where further research based on his ideas is called for (Bailey et al. 2019). By proposing that ‘meaning fulfilment’ consists of five steps – the demand, orientation, discovering, commitment, and action; or conceptually: ‘identifying the question’, ‘will to meaning’, ‘meaning-discovering’, ‘taking responsibility’, and ‘value-realization’ – this presentation advances theorizing of motivation and human conduct based on the ‘will to meaning’, and application of ‘meaning fulfilment’ in the contexts of meaningful work and sustainability transformation. Since transformative change has not been explored from the motivational perspective of logotheory, it offers a foundation for novel and mainstream-challenging ideas for implementing the change.