| Abstract: | ABSTRACT Managers of hospitality and service organizations have long believed that it is critical for their employees to have fun at work. They recognize the important relationships between their employees having fun and their customers having a pleasant experience. While everyone accepts this notion, there is little empirical support for either a definition of what managers can do to promote a fun work environment or even what makes a fun work environment fun. Further, while many positive outcomes for both the individual and the organization are claimed to be associated with fun work environments, there is even less empirical data to support this belief. This primary purpose of the paper is to identify and define the actions and activities that managers can do or support to create and sustain the feeling employees have that their firm is a fun place to work or have a “fun work environment.” The paper reports results of a large e-mail survey of human resource managers designed to identify what cues managers send to create a fun work environment, the degree to which these cues actually are associated with a work environment that is fun, and the positive individual and organizational outcomes that are claimed to be associated with working in such an environment. The study offers definitions and measurements of the cueing process, a fun work environment, and outcomes of the process. We found a strong relationship between the antecedent cues and the degree to which the work environment was perceived as fun. The relationships between a fun work environment and various outcomes were not as strong or comprehensive. While the results of this research are positive and extend our knowledge of cues, culture and especially “fun work environments,” more needs to be done in validating the measures and extending the research. |
