According to many influential authors, we are witnessing a long-term trend of degradation of the quality of work in industrial nations. Some authors, however, state that there is an important exception to this general trend, namely the Nordic Countries. This paper argues that even though there is some truth in the argument of the ‘Nordic exceptionalism’, in Finland a downward trend in employees’ views on the meaningfulness of work can be found.

In this paper, I make a statistical analysis of this trend during the period of 1992-2005 with the help of the data of the annual Finnish Working-Life Barometer and examine reasons for this trend. The main empirical finding is that employees’ views on changes in the meaningfulness of work in Finland have fluctuated in accordance with their views on changes in the economic situation of their workplace, but in this decade this association has clearly weakened and now a clear downward trend prevails.

I interpret the empirical findings with the help of the concept of ‘psychological contract’. My main argument is that the globalization of economy in recent years has weakened the preconditions for the traditional ‘paternalistic’ psychological contract among Finnish employees and has led to increasingly negative perceptions on changes in the meaningfulness of work.

In the end, the paper discusses how the psychological contract could be rebuilt in increasingly globalized economy. I suggest that for the future the most promising strategy would be to enhance management and the organization of work so that they provide employees better opportunities for continuous occupational and personal development and hence support their employability. It is also proposed that the discussion on the principles of good management and organization of work that provide employees better opportunities for the development of skills and competence would help trade unions find new vigour on the agenda of local bargaining, which in Finland is so far solely centred on employers’ demands for greater flexibility.