‘Work’ is a contested concept and so is the notion of ‘meaningful work’. The debate on work is hundreds of years old, while the discussion about meaningful work is recent. The historical discussions about the concept of work show, however, not just conceptual and value-free disagreements about the content and form of work, but also, and more fundamentally, its meaning for workers and society. This chapter discusses different approaches to the concept of work in the field of meaningful work. We contrast this scholarship with debates in the realm of job satisfaction and job quality. This allows us to embed the meaningful work discourse in alternative debates in the research on work and its meaning.