Organizational purpose is commonly presented as a source of meaning, coordination, and prosocial commitment. Yet purpose-driven membership may also create a moral burden when employees experience belonging as an obligation to embody organizational ideals, accept sacrifice, suppress disagreement, or allow work to dominate identity. This narrative review critically integrates research on organizational purpose, meaningful work, identity regulation, calling, identification, loyalty, moral distress, occupational strain, work design, leadership, and employee voice. A structured search and selection process supported critical thematic synthesis rather than systematic effect estimation. The evidence suggests that purpose becomes consequential through interpretation and identity uptake, not through mission language alone. Moral alignment may support meaningfulness and prosocial behavior while also extending work, weakening detachment, or legitimizing excessive demands. Belonging can provide health-supporting social resources, but strong identification may narrow evaluative independence and intensify loyalty-based ethical risk. These tensions are organized through an original Bounded Purpose–Belonging Synthesis, in which purpose engagement remains sustainable when it is volitional, adequately resourced, open to plural identities, protected by meaningful voice, and constrained by credible workload and ethical boundaries. The synthesis is not a validated causal model or implementation framework. Much of the available evidence is observational, context-specific, or drawn from adjacent constructs and selected occupations. Longitudinal, multilevel, within-person, qualitative-process, and field-experimental research is required to distinguish selection, socialization, temporal burden conversion, and organizational-level effects.
