Feeling Exhausted? Let’s Play – How Play in Work Relates to Experienced Burnout and Innovation Behaviors

Amber Yun-Ping Lee (), Yi-Hsien Wang () and Fei-Ran Yang ()
Additional contact information
Amber Yun-Ping Lee: National University of Tainan
Yi-Hsien Wang: National Sun Yat-sen University
Fei-Ran Yang: National Central University

Applied Research in Quality of Life, 2021, vol. 16, issue 2, No 7, 629-648

Abstract: Abstract Play in work, as one specific type of work designs, is regarded as the possible solution to experienced burnout and could bring the desirable outcomes to organizations. Drawing on Affective Events Theory (AET), we argued that workplace events (such as play) cause emotional reactions on the part of employees (i.e., burnout), which in turn influence workplace attitudes and behaviors (i.e., innovation behaviors). A total of 439 employees completed surveys, and the results showed that play in work positively relates to innovation behaviors. We also examined individual’s attitude toward workplace fun to further understand the impact of individual differences on the relationship between play in work and their feelings and subsequent behaviors. We found that the positive attitude toward fun moderated the indirect relationship between play in work and innovation behaviors via experienced burnout. Based on AET, our results showed that play in work could reduce employees’ experienced burnout which in turn lead to their innovation behaviors. Such an effect of play in work are stronger when an individual has more positive attitude toward fun at work. Practically, it is suggested that play in work would contribute to favorable outcomes in the workplace, but managers should pay attention to individual differences in attitude toward workplace fun to ensure the maximum benefit of play.

Keywords: Play in work; Experienced burnout; Attitude toward workplace fun; Innovation behaviors; Affective events theory (AET) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11482-019-09794-1 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:ariqol:v:16:y:2021:i:2:d:10.1007_s11482-019-09794-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/11482

DOI: 10.1007/s11482-019-09794-1

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Research in Quality of Life is currently edited by Daniel Shek

More articles in Applied Research in Quality of Life from Springer, International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().