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This study aims to introduce an alternative model, “volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA), Virtue and Vice” (3V’s), to unleash leadership skills, promote organisational collaborative change and impact sales performance during an unprecedented crisis.

The methodology outlines action research based on the 3V’s model and its application in an international business-to-business sales organisation during Covid-19. It explores alternative paths informed by play-at-work and Plato’s philosophy applied to work-based-learning. Each action/iteration adds to the model, which becomes more likely appropriate for various situations.

The 3V’s boosted change implementation and improved sales performance. The 3V’s conceptualised an invitation to immerse oneself in the constant “river of change” (VUCA) and a means of understanding the role of leadership in navigating this change by embracing simple rules: searching for justice (Virtue) and overcoming the barrier of public opinion (Vice).

The 3V’s model is grounded in leadership literature and a sole application, providing real international data relevant to organisations and leaders. This has yet to be evaluated further.

3V’s can enhance the understanding of a leading collaborative change and re-frame team dynamics in post-pandemic times for the broader public.

The approach advocated is a practice of “swimming alongside the team”, which should enable empowerment and collaboration rather than a top-down direction. Focussing on leaders who are moral people, this approach becomes a differentiator in a digital world.

This study examines Plato’s philosophy, play-at-work and other leadership theories in a model which prepares organisations to respond to crisis by providing the ability to reflect on human aspects and straightforward, transferable skills.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the role of embodied dimensions and relational possibilities of (serious) play at work. It shows how a phenomenological and processual approach can help in developing an integral understanding of (serious) play and its paradox in relation to work and practical wisdom and professional artistry in organizations.

Based on the literature review and phenomenology, the role of embodied dimension, and the nexus of playful practitioners, practices and playgrounds are discussed. Systematically, then the concept of “inter-playing” is proposed as a specific embodied and processual practice. Subsequently, the in-between is shown to be a medium and transrelational nexus for (serious) play that allows a more comprehensive understanding and implications.

Based on the phenomenological and relational approach, the concept of (inter-)play allows an extended understanding of serious play and its paradox as a form of an inter-practice. The mediating in-(ter-)between is revealed as decisive for playful practices and playgrounds in organizations. Serious play is linked to practical wisdom and professional artistry in organizations.

Specific theoretical and methodological implications for exploring and enacting play are offered. It is suggested to take research itself as a form of inter-practice and to enact a more integral epistemology and methodological pluralism, including body-related and art-based approaches and critical issues.

Some specific practical implications are provided that facilitate and enable embodied play and play-spaces in an ongoing, arts-based learning and development process in organizational and educational contexts.

The corporeality of responsive inter-play is seen as connected to sociality and social interaction as self and others are considered as a nexus. In particular, poetic phrónêsis in professional playful practice is linked to social creativity that includes attention and recognition of others and otherness as well as social inclusivity.

By extending the existing discourse and using an embodied approach, the paper proposes a novel orientation for re-interpreting serious play. Equally, it offers the new processual concepts of inter-play and inter-practice that allow more explorations and connections to discourses and practices of phronesis and art(istry).

This conceptual paper analyses cultural changes in the use of the concept of “play” in managerial ideologies and practices since the 1980s.

The paper uses Koselleck's approach to conceptual history in order to map how play is used in new ways by contemporary organisations. Organisational cultures characterised by “playfulness” and “fun” are used as technologies of self‐governance. It explores a variety of sources which show how this metamorphosis of play into a management tool has occurred.

The appropriation of play by management indicates a significant propensity in the contemporary culture of work. A more complex cultural process is unfolding in the ways in which play and work are recombined and intertwined: work organisations are increasingly places where people work more on themselves than they do on work. Work has become a central therapeutic stage set for engineering and managing souls, well‐being and even “happiness”. In an increasing number of cases, highly managed play settings make corporations resemble frenetic Dionysiac machines in which the Narcissistic modern self seeks an utopia of perpetual fun.

The paper proposes a novel approach to critiques of managerialism. Equally, it offers a new conceptual avenue for the historical analysis of managerial ideas. The result is an original interpretation of the way in which management practices function in their wider cultural contexts.

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.

A growing body of research finds that gig economy platforms use gamification to enhance managerial control. Focusing on technologically mediated forms of gamification, this literature reveals how platforms mobilize gig workers’ work effort by making the labour process resemble a game. This chapter contends that this tech-centric scholarship fails to fully capture the historical continuities between contemporary and much older occurrences of game-playing at work. Informed by interviews and participatory observations at two food delivery platforms in Amsterdam, I document how these platforms’ piece wage system gives rise to a workplace dynamic in which severely underpaid delivery couriers continuously employ game strategies to maximize their gig income. Reminiscent of observations from the early shop floor ethnographies of the manufacturing industry, I show that the game of gig income maximization operates as an indirect modality of control by (re)aligning the interests of couriers with the interests of capital and by individualizing and depoliticizing couriers’ overall low wage level. I argue that the new, algorithmic technologies expand and intensify the much older forms of gamified control by infusing the organizational activities of shift and task allocation with the logic of the piece wage game and by increasing the possibilities for interaction, direct feedback and immersion. My study contributes to the literature on gamification in the gig economy by interweaving it with the classic observations derived from the manufacturing industry and by developing a conceptualization of gamification in which both capital and labour exercise agency.

This paper aims to explore the impact of ebullient supervision on thriving at work, and relational social capital to stimulate employee creativity in the hospitality industry.

Using a purposive sampling approach, data were collected from 391 subordinates and their immediate supervisors in the hospitality industry through a structured questionnaire. To analyze the data, partial least structural equation modeling approach was considered.

Results show that ebullient supervision is supportive in generating personal resources of thriving at work and relational social capital, which later shape employee creativity.

The empirical findings of this study provide valuable insights for managers in the hospitality industry for human resource development strategy formulation to stimulate creativity in the hospitality industry.

The findings of this study suggest a novel antecedent of ebullient supervision for stimulating creativity in the hospitality industry. Hence, the paper has implications for researchers, practitioners and students.

The purpose of this paper is to seek to contribute to the field of workplace play by introducing the notion of social ludic activities (SLAs) as a specific form of play in organizations.

The conceptualization of SLAs is built upon insights from the practice and organizational play literatures.

SLAs can be deployed not only for productively engaging with work but also as an instrument to resist authority, boycott work or challenge firm contingencies. The particular enactments of SLAs may be influenced by how employees perceive and interpret the organizational climate (i.e. corporate culture, management style, job design and task complexity, and intra-firm interactions) in which they are embedded.

The recognition that emergent forms of play may be conducive to the generation of valuable outcomes without managerial intervention can save managers’ time and efforts required for dealing with potential employees’ resistance. Taking advantage from spontaneous manifestations of play implies understanding the logic of players and creating favorable corporate contexts for the emergence of SLAs rather than attempting to interfere in the natural experiences of flow.

SLAs are conceived as an alternative form of organizational play that is a priori unselfconscious and emergent, inherits autotelic and rational dimensions from prior views of play, draws upon practice insights, and represents the employee perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and elaborate on the construct of flourishing in schools as understood through the stories and explanations provided by a small group of public school principals. Framed within a positive organizational perspective, the specific objectives of this study are: to identify how school leaders understand and experience flourishing in their roles and in their schools; to explore the conditions, catalysts and/or galvanizing forces of flourishing in schools.

The researchers used an electronic Delphi survey to gain a qualitative description of the understandings and impressions of the construct of flourishing from the perspective of practicing school administrators in one school district in central British Columbia. Delphi responses were aggregated after each round and thematically analysed to determine patterns and trends for further examination through progressive iterations of the survey administered via e-mail. The final set of data were then analysed for patterns, trends and themes that were compared and contrasted against research findings in the literature underpinning the theoretical framework for this study.

While there was no single definition of what it means to flourish in the work of school leadership, shared descriptions from these principals indicated that they feel a sense of flourishing when they are working together with teachers from a sense of purpose and passion and in a spirit of play to cultivate learning climates that reflect a shared ownership for improving educational experiences for students. These initial findings provoke thinking about the potentials and benefits of shifting the focus of research and practice in educational leadership towards more positive, strengths-based perspectives.

The sample size was small, and so generalizing findings beyond this study is unreasonable. Further, because the researchers separated participant information from responses in order to safeguard anonymity and to aggregate the responses to provide these back to participants for their further elaboration and reflections, they were unable to determine whether particular responses were connected to context (elementary or secondary, size of school, years of experience as an administrator), gender or other demographic factors. However, the use of the electronic Delphi instrument provided insights on engaging school principals in thoughtful inquiry as participants, while respecting the busy workload and time constraints associated with the work of school principals.

Attending to well-being in the work of leading schools is an under-researched area of educational leadership. This study is an example of how researching educational leadership from a positive, strengths-based, human development perspective may provide useful insights for supporting principals and other educators to notice, nurture and sustain a sense of flourishing in their work and across the school. While further research is needed to examine the construct of flourishing across a diverse range of school organizations, the findings from this study provoke thinking about the benefits of studying what goes well, what brings vitality and a more full sense of humanity in the work of leading school organizations.

The researchers use a new perspective for examining and explaining the phenomenon of flourishing in schools, a positive organizational research orientation. The use of this strengths-based, positive, human development approach to examining the construct of flourishing from the perspective of school principals can offer new insights and strategies for attending to well-being as an integral part of the work of leading schools.

The objective of this study was to investigate and explore the emotion experiences of employees in a work context. A non-probability sample (N=52) was taken from the mining industry in the North West and Gauteng Provinces of South Africa. Data collection was done through a phenomenological method of semistructured in-depth interviews and observations. Content analysis was used to analyze and interpret the research data through open coding. The main goal was to determine the emotion experiences of employees, and the following three themes were extracted on the basis of three research questions: what are the particular emotions employees experience at work; what are the specific events or situations that lead to these emotions; and how do employees manage or control these emotion experiences. Some of the emotions experienced were anger, aggression and frustration, disappointment, and suspicion, skepticism and cynicism. The specific events were divided into three levels namely organizational, group, and individual level. Some of these events included organizational culture, lack of managerial support, supervisory relationships and ineffective communication, relationships at work, and role conflict. It was also found that employees make use of emotion work, emotional intelligence, and emotional distancing and detachment to regulate and manage emotion experiences.

Within entrepreneurship literature, the conventional approaches inspired by Schumpeter's “creative destruction” have largely emphasized the role of human cognitive processes to come up with new business ideas. In contemporary studies, however, there is a recent research stream wherein creativity is aestheticized. As a research line of the aesthetic approach, there is an increasing interest for playfulness and other signals of enjoyment that can also stimulate the entrepreneur's creative acts.

This chapter is a reflexion about the liberating and creative role of play in the context of sport entrepreneurship, particularly, in the fitness industry. It aspires to give to the recent development of the sport entrepreneurship field a novel twist by relating it to a theology of play. Drawing on the work of one of the most influential twentieth-century theologians who has approached play theology, Hugo Rahner, we present how his theological approach may be used to widen our understanding of sport entrepreneurship. This theological perspective allows us to develop alternative thoughts based on concepts that transcend the typical rationalist business approach and its instrumental language.