Having some fun with it: A theoretical review and typology of activity‐based play‐at‐work

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2444
• Date: 01 February 2021
• Published date: 01 February 2021

THE JOB ANNUAL REVIEW AND CONCEPTUAL

DEVELOPMENT ISSUE

Having some fun with it: A theoretical review and typology of

activity-based play-at-work

Nicole A. Celestine | Gillian Yeo

Business School, Management and

Organisations, University of Western Australia,

Crawley, WA, Australia

Correspondence

Nicole A. Celestine, Business School,

Management and Organizations, University of

Western Australia, M261, 35 Stirling Highway,

Crawley, WA 6009, Australia.

Email: nicole.celestine@research.uwa.edu.au

Funding information

Westpac Scholars Trust; Departmentof

Education, Skills and Employment

Summary

In recent decades, practitioner interest in the notion of “play”at work has generated

a surge of research on the topic of play-at-work activities. Findings suggest that

activity-based play-at-work can produce an array of positive outcomes for individuals

and the organization. However, there remains uncertainty about which forms of play

are effective for meeting which particular objectives as past reviews have either

focused on a narrow activity or treated all activities as uniform. In this paper, we

draw on knowledge from the play and management literatures to review 122 studies

of activity-based play-at-work and its outcomes. By identifying several activity-based

play-at-work concepts from the literature, we apply both theoretical and data-driven

approaches to generate a two-dimensional typology comprising four categories.

These categories are manager-initiated work-embedded play (e.g., serious play),

self-/peer-initiated work-embedded play (e.g., experiencing one's work as a “game,”

“puzzle,”or “sport”), manager-initiated diversionary play (e.g., celebrations), and

self-/peer-initiated diversionary play (e.g., joking practices). In our discussion, we

unify play-at-work activities under an energy-management framework and consider

implications for understanding each of the four categories in our typology using both

theories applied in past research and energy-related theories from neighboring

literatures.

KEYWORDS

energy management, fun, hedonic, instrumental, play at work

1|INTRODUCTION

The presumed benefits of “play at work”are creating waves in schol-

arly research (e.g., Petelczyc, Capezio, Wang, Restubog, &

Aquino, 2018) and becoming increasingly salient within management

circles. Managers are rolling out playful initiatives (e.g., company out-

ings) to their workforces in the hope of forwarding an attractive view

of the firm to potential applicants (Tews, Michel, & Bartlett, 2012),

work is being “gamified”using point systems (Deterding, Dixon,

Khaled, & Nacke, 2011), and workers are being instructed to use toys

to foster innovation (Roos, Victor, & Statler, 2004). These initiatives

are all forms of activity-based play-at-work—the focus of this review.

Despite the popularization of these play-at-work activities, scholars

face persistent challenges around their conceptualization. A recent

flurry of research has generated multiple overlapping forms of

activity-based play-at-work, and as such, we lack the theoretical preci-

sion required to understand distinctions between different types and

differential links to outcomes.

We address these challenges by developing a conceptual and

theoretical organizing framework for the activity-based play-at-work

literature. Our first key contribution is to distill activity-based play-at-

work concepts into a typology that provides the necessary platform

for making advances in this space. Recent thinking argues that

grounded typologies (Kluge, 2000) capture empirical reality and

Received: 17 November 2017 Revised: 26 February 2020 Accepted: 29 March 2020

DOI: 10.1002/job.2444

252 © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J Organ Behav. 2021;42:252–268.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/job

synthesize theory, which can aid in identifying patterns in the litera-

ture (Golan & Bamberger, 2015). Our second contribution is to intro-

duce an energy-management framework for understanding the four

categories of play within our typology. This contribution enables us to

consider previously used theories, as well as those that have not yet

been considered, under a unified framework. Doing so identifies theo-

retical similarities and distinctions between concepts, which can

explain patterns of effects uncovered by our review and inform direc-

tions for future research and theory building.

To understand the types of insights we can uncover via our

approach, we highlight two examples of activity-based play-at-work.

Consider a worker who plays table soccer in the break room and

another who takes part in a LEGO serious play workshop. The table

soccer is an off-task activity initiated by the employee, whereas seri-

ous play is part of one's work and initiated by management. Many

questions arise when considering these differences. For example,

should we expect hedonic or instrumental benefits from each of

these activities? How intrinsically motivated will each employee be

to participate? Is one of these activities more likely to have a dark

side? The current state of knowledge prevents us from answering

these questions. However, as we demonstrate in this review, our

typology and the energy-management framework that we apply to it

allows us to hypothesize answers to existing questions such as

these, as well as generate novel questions concerning theory and

practice.

To address our aims, we review 122 studies on activity-based

play-at-work and distill its forms into a two-dimensional typology. We

then cross these dimensions to create four categories of activity-

based play-at-work and argue that existing theories cannot account

for the complexity in this construct's multidimensionality. Therefore,

to address this issue, we introduce an energy-management framework

in our discussion that not only emphasizes what is common across

play-at-work activities but also the uniqueness of each category, all-

owing us to make targeted suggestions for theory-building and empir-

ical research.

2|WHAT IS ACTIVITY-BASED PLAY-AT-

WORK?

Scholars have taken different approaches to study play-at-work

activities and have grappled with conceptualization. We thus begin by

summarizing existing work on the topic to clarify the scope of our

review and build our typology upon a clear definition of the concept.

Petelczyc et al. (2018) introduced Van Vleet and Feeney's (2015)

definition of adult play from social psychology to the field of manage-

ment to conceptualize play at work. This definition comprises three

components: (a) the goals of amusement and fun, (b) a high level of inter-

activity among play partners or with the activity itself, and (c) an

enthusiastic and in-the-moment attitude. We broaden this definition by

excluding the component “in-the-moment attitude”because it

excludes legitimate concepts (e.g., fun activities and some forms of

“goofing off”). Thus, we define activity-based play-at-work as activity

undertaken in a work context that is interactive in nature and undertaken

with the goal of having fun.

The Oxford dictionary defines “activity”as “the condition in which

things are happening or being done”(Oxford Living Dictionary, 2018).

We define the “activity”component of activity-based play-at-work in

line with this definition. As such, any activity (e.g., a conversation with

a colleague and a work task) can be a context in which activity-based

play-at-work occurs (i.e., not necessarily through a discrete recrea-

tional activity or event). Interactivity refers to engagement with others,

materials, or tasks. For instance, watching television alone may be

experienced as “fun,”yet it is not “play”as it lacks the component of

interactivity. Finally, fun is a discrete emotional experience character-

ized by pleasure (Kelly, 1987); we view activity-based play-at-work as

encompassing the goal to seek out or foster this emotional experience

for oneself or others. Thus, according to this definition, a game of

table soccer in the break room is likely to represent a play-at-work

activity, yet lunchtime yoga or responding to personal messages while

at work may not if participation is driven by motives other than a

desire to have fun (e.g., health and parenting responsibilities).

We now note how activity-based play-at-work is distinct from

other forms of play-at-work and related constructs. First, activity-

based play-at-work concerns engagement in play itself. In contrast,

play as an organizational characteristic regards the extent to which

organizations are supportive of playful initiatives (Petelczyc

et al., 2018), and trait playfulness reflects a predisposition to approach

activities in a playful way (Barnett, 2007). Second, we note that

activity-based play-at-work is distinct from conceptualizations of

humor and subsumes the notion of “workplace fun.”Organizational

humor regards amusing communications that produce positive emo-

tions and cognitions (Romero & Cruthirds, 2006). Although humor

may manifest through some forms of activity-based play-at-work

(e.g., a humorous speech at a corporate celebration), the presence of

humor is not a necessary component. For instance, most gamification

initiatives are not inherently humorous. Workplace fun refers to “any

social, interpersonal, or task activities at work of a playful or humor-

ous nature which provide an individual with amusement, enjoyment,

or pleasure”(Fluegge, 2008, p. 5). Tews et al. (2012) have identified

three workplace-fun concepts—coworker socializing, fun activities,

and fun job responsibilities. Although workplace fun can be passive,

types of workplace fun that are interactive and enacted with the goal

of having fun are subsumed under our definition, and our typology

shows that the categories of workplace fun can be further broken

down. For instance, a key difference between fun activities and the

play occurring through fun job responsibilities is that the former is ini-

tiated by managers and the latter by the workers. As we will demon-

strate, this distinction has important implications.

3|REVIEWING THE LITERATURE:

TYPOLOGY DEVELOPMENT AND FINDINGS

In this section, we detail our approach to reviewing the literature and

present our results. We begin by describing our search strategy and

CELESTINE AND YEO 253