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Devote yourself to enjoy daily work: a diary study on flow experience and organizational identification

Yanhui Mao, Shuangyang Guo, Mei Xie, Junkai Yu, Xuyuan Deng, Yingchao Li, Yuxi Zhai, Feng Kong

Journal of Managerial Psychology

ISSN: 0268-3946

Article publication date: 26 June 2023

Issue publication date: 6 July 2023

522

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to examine the day-to-day within-person associations between employees' flow experience and organizational identification within the rarely studied context of construction engineering project organizations.

Design/methodology/approach

In this daily diary design, the authors surveyed 204 (Mage = 28.3, SD = 5.69) employees of a state-owned construction engineering project organization in southwest China via the online questionnaires comprising flow and organizational identification scales once daily on each workday for three consecutive weeks, which yielded 3,060 data entries. The authors then tested the temporal directionality between flow and organizational identification with multilevel time-series cross-lagged path analysis using Mplus 8.3.

Findings

Daily flow experience was linked positively with same-day organizational identification. Importantly, flow experience on the previous day predicted organizational identification on a subsequent day, but not vice versa.

Practical implications

This study suggests that construction engineering project managers should implement interventions fostering the employees' flow experience to promote organizational identification, with important implications for organizations aiming at flourishing workforces by facilitating organizational identification through implementing flow strategies.

Originality/value

There is a dearth of diary studies on flow and organizational identification specific to construction engineering project employees. The authors’ findings provide concrete evidence of the fluctuant nature of daily flow experience and organizational identification as well as their dynamic predictive pathway relationship.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to express their gratitude to the editor and reviewers of this journal for their insightful comments and constructive suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper. The authors also appreciate the following funding bodies for financial support: the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 71801180, 72271205, 31800942, and 71871201), Applied Psychology Research Center of Sichuan Province (Grant No. CSXL-22101), and the 2022 Graduate Students' Educational Research Program of Southwest Jiaotong University (YJG5-2022-Z019-2022).

Citation

Mao, Y., Guo, S., Xie, M., Yu, J., Deng, X., Li, Y., Zhai, Y. and Kong, F. (2023), "Devote yourself to enjoy daily work: a diary study on flow experience and organizational identification", Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 38 No. 5, pp. 338-351. https://doi.org/10.1108/JMP-07-2022-0355

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited

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