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Fun at workplace is considered an important initiative to build co-working communities, and this study aims to study its role in promoting the innovative behaviour of co-workers [members of co-working spaces (CWS)] and the mechanism of its influence.

Based on the theory of social exchange and resource conservation, the authors conducted a qualitative study to explore the four dimensions of workplace fun and a quantitative study to empirically analyse the relationship between community embeddedness, organisational embeddedness, workplace fun and creativity of co-workers, taking K-space as an example.

Workplace fun is positively correlated with co-workers' creativity. Community embeddedness plays a complete mediating role between workplace fun and organisational embeddedness. Community embeddedness and organisational embeddedness play a chain-mediating role between workplace fun and creativity.

This study explores the process and impact of fun on employee creativity in a shared office environment by clarifying the composition of fun in CWS workplaces and the transmission mechanism of fun through informal community embeddedness and formal organisational embeddedness, expanding the research perspective on the factors influencing employee creativity in the new office model and enriching the research findings on the impact of fun at work on job performance.

This paper discusses office design in the ‘new economy’. Office buildings of dot.com companies seem to be dominated by colourful materials, luxurious facilities such as gyms or lounge areas and gimmicks such as jukeboxes and pool tables. Employees ‘float’ around in these offices wherever and whenever they want. Such work environments seem very attractive and productive. Still, the meaning and relevance of such ‘fun offices’ can be questioned. In this paper the authors try to explain where this informal and casual office style comes from, relating it to labour market developments and changes in organisational culture. Secondly, they discuss the merits of ‘fun’ office design. How does it affect people’s creativity, their ideas about work and the distinction between work and private life?

Many organisations have changed to new ways of working, steered or followed up by design interventions and sharing of activity related workplaces. Expectations have been high. Innovative offices should lead to more efficient use of space and other facilities; greater job satisfaction; the projection of a positive image to clients; an improved performance of the organisation and its staff; and reduced costs. Have innovations in the working environment fulfilled these high expectations? Are the new offices really more efficient and more pleasant to work in? Or will constant changing of the workplace reduce satisfaction and productivity? What are the ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ of teleworking? Are the extra costs of nice ergonomic furniture, high‐tech information and communication technology (ICT) and image‐boosting gadgets counterbalanced by the expected profits in higher productivity and more efficient use of space? Evaluative research results show a mixed picture. Besides the considerable satisfaction with the attractive design and the improved opportunities to interact, there are many complaints about problems in concentrating on work. Psychological mechanisms, such as the need for status, privacy and individual territory, do not necessarily hinder ‘flexi‐working’, but only when the new situation provides considerable added value. Teleworking offers more freedom of choice, but there are attendant risks.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate, through the Delphi technique, how demand drivers and accommodation priorities for emerging knowledge‐intensive firms are understood and how corporate property and asset managers can respond to them.

This empirical paper discusses the results emerging from a Delphi study in four rounds with ten experts. This research focuses on the high growth, commercial sector in south‐east Queensland in Australia.

The accommodation priority demands of knowledge‐intensive firms varied depending on the stage of their lifecycle, that is, start‐up, established or mature. For start‐ups, accommodation cost was of primary importance; however, for the established and mature firms, their priorities were directly related to those supporting the progress of the firms itself and the productivity of its employers.

Many of the findings are likely to be applicable to commercial environments elsewhere and would provide a basis for investors, developers, asset owners and managers to better align their “old” assets, through better asset management, to these “new” firms within this rapidly changing environment.

The use of the Delphi technique in this multi‐faceted research topic captures the practical knowledge, wisdom and intuition of experts who deal with such issues on a day‐to‐day basis. Most real estate issues usually involve diverse specialities and perspectives – this paper illustrates how common ground through consensus can be achieved.

As a step toward more firmly establishing factors to promote retention among younger employees in the hospitality industry, this study aims to focuses on fun in the workplace (fun activities, manager support for fun and coworker socializing) and training climate (organizational support, manager support and job support) as potential antecedents of turnover in a European context.

Logistic regression was used to analyze the impact of fun and training climate on turnover with a sample of 902 employees from Belgium, Germany and The Netherlands. Data on fun and training climate were obtained through surveys, which were paired with turnover data from organizational records.

With respect to fun in the workplace, group-level manager support for fun and coworker socializing were significantly related to turnover, but not fun activities. With respect to training climate, individual-level job support was significantly related to turnover, but not organizational support and manager support.

As the data were obtained from employees from one organization, further research would be valuable with additional samples to substantiate the generalizability of the results.

Given the challenge of turnover, organizations should foster informal aspects of fun in the workplace and learning opportunities to promote retention.

The study examined the fun–turnover relationship in a context outside of the USA where previous fun–turnover research has been conducted, and it examined fun relative to training climate, which has not been studied heretofore. This study also investigated group- and individual-level effects of both fun and training climate on turnover.

Recently, many practitioners, books, articles, and consultants have claimed that a fun work environment is a good thing for organizations to have. These sources assert fun will lead to increased productivity, higher morale, and fewer human resource problems. This paper draws the results of a large e‐mail survey of managers conducted by the authors. The results indicate that there is overwhelming support for having fun in the workplace. These respondents report that having a fun work environment will increase the levels of enthusiasm, satisfaction, creativity, communications among employees and enhanced feelings of group cohesiveness. The respondents reported few significant downside risks. The survey also asked for suggestions as to how to make the work environment more fun. Many responses were received. They were analyzed, cataloged, and evaluated by the authors and discussed in this paper.

The purpose of this paper is to explain some divergent findings on experiences of fun at work. It explains conflicting findings by moving from a focus on classifying the activity (as, e.g. task/managed/organic) to foregrounding the dynamics of the experience, adding to the growing conceptualisation of fun at work as a multi-dimensional construct.

This research draws on empirical data obtained through case study and interviews with 13 participants from two organisations. These interviews were subjected to intense thematic analysis.

It was found that an individual’s underlying beliefs about the organisation; the perceived drivers of the fun practice; and the level of control exerted over a fun practice significantly shape the experience. The paper draws on the concept of the psychological contract to frame the relationship between these three key interacting elements.

This paper provides a greater understanding of the dynamics of fun experiences, enabling management to better recognise and contextualise the impact of fun practices.

Given conflicting findings on both the experience and outcomes of fun at work, this study elucidates the dynamics underpinning the experience of fun at work. It is novel to consider experiences of fun through the lens of psychological contracts, which offers fresh insight into the understanding of individual experiences of fun.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether fun in the workplace inadvertently leads to greater incidences of unwanted sexual attention. Specifically, this research examined the relationship between three dimensions of fun and unwanted sexual attention – fun activities, coworker socializing and manager support for fun.

Multiple regression was used to analyze survey data from three Qualtrics business panels.

Fun activities were related to greater incidences of unwanted sexual attention, while manager support for fun was related to fewer instances. With respect to fun activities, mandatory attendance and holding the activities on nights and weekends were associated with further increased unwanted sexual attention. The presence of non-employees during activities was associated with fewer incidences.

The data on fun in the workplace and unwanted sexual attention were obtained at one point in time. Future research would be valuable that obtains data collected at multiple points in time to more fully substantiate cause-and-effect relationships.

Employers may seek to foster a climate in which managers encourage employees to have fun on the job as well as one that explicitly focuses on preventing sexual harassment. Curbing unwanted sexual attention during fun activities may be facilitated by involving non-employees, refraining from holding activities at night and on weekends and keeping employee participation voluntary.

From the perspective of fun in the workplace, this research has demonstrated fun activities may have unintended, adverse consequences. From the perspective of sexual harassment, this research has identified antecedents not typically be considered to be contributing factors of unwanted sexual attention.

The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a qualitative study of software engineers' playful behaviors at work.

The interviewed software engineers come from two European and three American companies. The research is based on ethnographical data, gathered in two longitudinal studies 2005‐2008. The methods used in the study include open‐ended unstructured interviews, participant observations, stories collection, and shadowings.

It is found that the currently dominant theory of normative control explaining software engineers workplace diminishes leisure and entertainment attributes of knowledge work. Fun at workplace is discovered to be an important, if not crucial, element of everyday programmers' job.

The study contributes to the literature by replying to the call for more research on high‐tech organizational practices, and on non‐job related behaviors at workplace. It reveals playful performance as a constituent for knowledge work and may contribute towards a better understanding of the role played by fun and playful behavior in creative problem‐solving and inventing.

Informed by social representation theory, the study aims to explore how marketing workers represent their activities on social media.

A naturalistic data set of 17,553 messages posted on Twitter by advertising workers was collected. A sample of over 1,000 unique messages from this data set, incorporating all external links and images, was analysed inductively using structured thematic analysis.

Advertising workers represent marketing work as a series of fun yet constrained activities involving relationships with clients and colleagues. They engage in cognitive polyphasia by evaluating these productive differences in both a positive and negative light.

The study marks a novel use of social representation theory and innovative social media analysis. Further research should explore these relations in greater depth by considering the networks that marketing workers create on social media and establish how, when and why marketing workers turn to social media in their everyday activities.

Marketing workers choose to represent aspects of their work to one another, using social media. Marketing managers should support such activities and consider social media as a way to understand the lives and experiences of marketing workers.

Marketing researchers have embraced digital media as a route to understanding consumers. This study demonstrates the value of analysing digital media to develop an understanding of marketing work. It sheds new light on the ways marketing workers create social relationships and enables marketing managers to understand and observe the social aspects of effective marketing.