Flow at Work

Measurement and Implications

Clive Fullagar, Antonella Delle Fave

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317976189
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Flow can be defined as the experience of being fully engaged with the task at hand, unburdened by outside concerns or worries. Flow is an enjoyable state of effortless attention, complete absorption, and focussed energy. The pivotal role of flow in fostering good performance and high productivity led psychologists to study the features and outcomes of this experience in the workplace, in order to ascertain the impact of flow on individual and organizational well-being, and to identify strategies to increase the workers' opportunities for flow in job tasks.

This ground-breaking new collection is the first book to provide a comprehensive understanding of flow in the workplace that includes a contribution from the founding father of flow research, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. On a conceptual level, this book clarifies the features and structure of flow experience; and provides research-based evidence of how flow can be measured in the workplace on an empirical level, as well as exploring how it impacts on motivation, productivity, and well-being. By virtue of its rigorous but also practical approach, the book represents a useful tool for both scientists and practitioners. The collection addresses a number of key issues, including:

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• Core components of how the idea of flow differs from experience in the work context

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• Organizational and task-related conditions fostering flow at work

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• How flow can be measured in the workplace

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• The organizational and personal implications of flow

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• The relationship between task features and flow opportunities at work

Featuring contributions from some of the most active researchers in the field, Flow at Work: Measurement and Implications is an important book in an emerging field of study. The concept of flow has enormous implications for organizations as well as the individual, and this volume will be of interest to all students and researchers in organizational/occupational psychology and positive psychology, as well as practitioners and consultants with an interest in employee motivation and well-being.

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Flow at Work

The evolution of a construct

Clive Fullagar, Antonella Delle Fave, and Steve Van Krevelen

What motivates us to work? This is a question that has engaged humankind since the earliest philosophers. Despite the interest in this fundamental question, there have been almost as many answers as there have been thinkers who have considered the issue. Even consensus on a definition of work motivation has been elusive, probably because the concept is so complex. Flow experience (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975), one of the most original constructs developed in psychology during the previous century, can partially help us answer such a challenging question. Its positive and rewarding features, which include deep concentration, involvement, and enjoyable absorption in an activity, may shed light on at least one of the driving forces leading people to invest massive amounts of energies and resources in the work domain – namely, intrinsic motivation.

The primary aim of this book is to gather the contributions of different researchers who have been trying to delve into the complex issue of flow experience at work, its antecedents and its outcomes. In order to fully grasp the contribution of flow theory to organizational psychology, we will start with the analysis of its distinctive motivational component, through a brief historical overview of the development of the concept of intrinsic motivation.

Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation

That individuals might engage in an activity because the activity is perceived as rewarding, in and of itself, is a notion that has not always been prevalent in the motivational literature (Deci, 1975). Early understandings of motivation were dominated by mechanistic theories, such as psychoanalysis and behaviorism (Pinder, 1984). Freud (1915/1927) believed that humans are driven to engage in behaviors by basic instincts and the interaction of these instincts with environmental constraints. Behavioral approaches emphasized the environmental contingencies that establish mechanistic associations between stimuli, responses, and reinforcements (Skinner, 1953, 1971). Essentially behavior can be explained by the organism’s motivation to seek out appetitive and pleasant outcomes and to avoid punishing and unpleasant consequences. As Hunt (1965) pointed out, it was believed that “without the action of such extrinsic drive-stimuli, organisms [would] presumably become quiescent (Freud, 1915; Hull, 1943, p. 194).” The behaviorist emphasis on studying observable phenomena, in the interest of developing a scientific psychology, largely excluded internal processes as an explanation of what makes individuals engage in certain behaviors (Watson, 1913).

Woodworth (1918, 1958), in his behavior-primacy theory, was the first psychologist to postulate that behavior can be self-perpetuating. He proposed that humans are active organisms that can engage in intrinsically motivated behavior and that an activity can provide its own drive (Woodworth, 1918). Although Wood-worth did not specifically study or describe an intrinsic motivational process, he planted the seed for later theories, such as Allport’s (1937) notion of “functional autonomy.” It was Allport who first stipulated that the drive to engage in an activity may become independent from the motive that initiated the activity such that the activity becomes self-motivating.

Despite Woodworth’s and Allport’s seminal theories of motivation, behavioral and mechanistic frameworks dominated the field until the mid-1950s. It was at this time that several studies conducted on animals began to recognize the intrinsic components of motivation. Specifically, this research demonstrated that animals would engage in certain behaviors purely out of curiosity or playful exploration, and in the absence of any extrinsic reward or reinforcement (Berlyne, 1955; Butler, 1953; Butler & Harlow, 1957; Montgomery, 1954; Myers & Miller, 1954; Welker, 1956). These experiments indicated “an independent exploratory motive” (White, 1959, p. 298). Over the course of the decade evidence began to accumulate that certain kinds of behaviors were not motivated by extrinsic factors. Many animal behaviors seemed to be driven by inquisitiveness and a need to explore and to effectively interact with the environment (White, 1959). Furthermore, such inquisitive behavior was more likely to occur in the absence of painful stimulation, homeostatic needs, and appetitive drives (Hunt, 1965).

At about the same time humanistic psychologists, such as Maslow (1954), Rogers (1961), and Laing (1967), were beginning to question some of the basic tenets of psychoanalysis and behaviorism. This “third force” in psychology had its roots in existential philosophical thought (e.g., Sartre, 1957). In contrast to the determinism of the other two psychological approaches, humanistic psychology posited that individuals were capable of “free will,” and defined themselves through the choices they made. The humanistic psychological perspective was essentially a subjective one, attempting to understand behavior through the phenomenological lens of the individual. Although many of the principles of humanistic psychology were untested at the time, its theoretical framework provided the impetus for the development of the notion of intrinsic motivation. For example, Maslow (1954) distinguished between the basic motivational drives (“deficiency needs”) for sex, food, and safety, and the higher-order drives (“growth needs”) to actualize talents, achieve understanding, and fulfill creative potential. Again, the distinction was made between extrinsic and intrinsic forms of motivation.

It was within this psychological Zeitgeist that the first theories specific to intrinsic motivation began to evolve. Many of these theories drew on White’s (1959) concept of the need to effectively and competently interact with one’s environment. The need for competence and self-determination was the basis for these emergent theories. De Charms (1968), for example, believed that the main motivating force for individuals was the need to be in control of one’s fate and to be personally effective in changing one’s environment. Deci (1975) conducted research indicating that people were motivated to engage in many behaviors out of a need for (a) competence (i.e., to control one’s environment and experience mastery); (b) relatedness (i.e., to interact and connect with others); and (c) autonomy (i.e., to be self-determining and the causal agent of one’s life).

Despite the emergence of these theories of intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation was still receiving attention, and researchers attempted to understand and articulate the relationship between these two types of motivations (Deci, 1975). Behaviorists would argue that extrinsic rewards enhance intrinsic motivation by providing secondary reinforcement and increasing resistance to extinction (Aron-freed, 1968; Keller, 1969). Early animal studies (Davis, Settlage, & Harlow, 1950) partially supported this association by showing that monkeys’ intrinsic interest in solving a puzzle was initially disrupted by the introduction of extrinsic rewards, but then increased at a higher level than prior to the presentation of food. However, de Charms (1968) proposed an alternative explanation to this phenomenon, hypothesizing that extrinsic rewards would decrease intrinsic motivation because they shift the locus of causality away from the individual to the reward. A series of experiments conducted in the 1970s demonstrated that if individuals were offered monetary rewards for performing an intrinsically motivated activity, intrinsic motivation would decrease, particularly if the rewards were made contingent on performance (Deci, 1971; Greene, Sternberg, & Lepper, 1976; Lepper, Greene, & Nisbett, 1973; Mellstrom & Johannesson, 2008; Rosenfield, Folger, & Adelman, 1980).

In the attempt to explain the overjustification effect, several theoretical frameworks were developed. Self-perception theory (Bem, 1967) posits that people make inferences about their behavior on the basis of external constraints. The use of external rewards predisposes individuals to attribute the reason for their own behavior to external contingencies, shifting their explanation from intrinsic to extrinsic reasons. Alternatively, cognitive evaluation theory (Deci, 1975) suggests that extrinsic rewards, particularly monetary, are perceived as being coercive and detracting from the individual’s sense of control. Therefore intrinsic motivation is inhibited by external rewards. Consistent with self-determination theory (de Charms, 1968; Deci, 1971), external rewards diminish perceptions of competence, increase external perceived locus of causality, and promote disinterest in the activity (Deci & Ryan, 1985). However, certain kinds of external regulation, such as feedback and praise, can facilitate perceived competence, increase a sense of autonomy, and positively affect intrinsic motivation. Nonetheless, this research further made apparent the distinction between intrinsically and extrinsically motivated behavior.

“Flow”

It was against this intellectual backdrop that Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a PhD student at the University of Chicago, began studying the psychology of creativity. While studying artists Csikszentmihalyi became interested in why painters would engage in art in the absence of extrinsic rewards, food, drink, and sleep, and despite considerable physical discomfort (Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). In other words, he noticed that the creative process of artists seemed entirely intrinsically motivated and he began a systematic exploration of the associated experience. In the early 1970s Csikszentmihalyi and several graduate students began to interview individuals about their subjective experiences in a variety of intrinsically motivated activities, including rock-climbing, chess, dancing, basketball, and surgery. These studies were to form the basis of flow theory.

Originally, the term autotelic state was used to describe this self-directed optimal experience, from the Greek words auto (meaning ‘self’) and telos (meaning ‘goal’). The label ‘flow’ derived from the descriptions provided by several interviewees who recurrently emphasized the fluid process of playful effort and concentration as like being carried along on a stream of water. Csikszentmihalyi defined this dynamic state as “the holistic sensation that people feel when they act with total involvement” (1975, p. 36). Regardless of the activity surveyed, flow was consistently described as a mental state of being totally immersed in, and absorbed by, an enjoyable activity. Both qualitative and quantitative research over a variety of work and leisure activities indicated that the experience of flow consists of the following six components (Nakamura & Csikszentmihalyi, 2009):

1. An intense focus and concentration on the task at hand.
2. A merging of action and awareness in that the activity becomes spontaneous and automatic.
3. A sense of control over what one is doing.
4. A loss of self-consciousness and a lack of concern for or about oneself.
5. A transformation of one’s perception of time passing.
6. A sense of enjoyment in the intrinsic motivation of the activity.

While these six experiential components are considered essential indicators of flow and discussed as discrete entities, it is important to understand that an individual experiencing flow is unlikely to be aware of any particular component. The indicators of flow are experienced simultaneously, which is to say that flow is a holistic experience, a by-product of an individual being consumed in an intrinsically motivating activity.

In line with theories of intrinsic motivation that emphasize regulatory compatibility between individual characteristics (e.g., skill level, need for achievement and dispositional factors) and situational characteristics (e.g., the demands of the task, goal clarity, and resources; Keller & Bless, 2008), three preconditions were identified as necessary to induce flow. These may be argued to be structural task characteristics rather than components of the subjective experience of flow (Nakamura & Csikszentmihalyi, 2009). The first precondition – one of the core tenets of flow theory (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, 1997) – is represented by an optimal balance between the challenges that individuals perceive in the task and the skills that they perceive to possess in performing the task. Typically, both skills and challenge must be at a moderate to high level to experience flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975; Massimini & Carli, 1988; Massimini, Csikszentmihalyi, & Carli, 1987; Sartori et al., 2014). When the task is overly challenging, there is a greater likelihood that individuals will experience anxiety and stress (Sartori & Delle Fave, 2014). Flow and performance anxiety have been shown to be incompatible and mutually exclusive states (Fullagar, Knight, & Sovern, 2013). On the other hand, if the task is too easy, there is the tendency for the individual to experience boredom and apathy (Delle Fave & Massimini, 2005). The importance of challenge/skill balance in flow theory has been empirically supported by several studies (Bassi, Ferrario, Ba, Delle Fave, & Viganò, 2012; Delle Fave & Bassi, 2000; Delle Fave & Massimini, 2004, 2005; Delle Fave, Bassi, & Massimini, 2003; Eisenberger, Jones, Stinglhamber, Shanock, & Randall, 2005; Engeser & Rheinberg, 2008; Fullagar et al., 2013; Haworth & Evans, 1995; Hektner & Asakawa, 2000). However, some of these same studies also showed that relatively high levels of flow can be experienced when skills exceed challenge, suggesting that the relationship between the challenge of a task and the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• Preface
• 1 Flow at work: the evolution of a construct
• 2 Measuring flow at work
• 3 Capturing within-person changes in flow at work: theoretical importance and research methodologies
• 4 What predicts flow at work?: theoretical and empirical perspectives
• 5 Redefining flow at work
• 6 The consequences of flow
• 7 Applications of flow to work
• 8 Flow in the context of industrial and organizational psychology: the case of work motivation
• 9 Work, cultures, and the culture of work: flow across countries and professions
• 10 Will work ever be fun again?
• Index