Investigating the Impact of Fun at Work on Job Satisfaction and Work Engagement of Employees through the Mediating Role of Innovative Behavior

The human resources of any organization are their most valuable assets, because in the competitive environment of today's organization, one of the most important factors that maintains the competitive advantage of organizations and their dominance over environmental challenges is the human resources and organizations should try to improve their quality. Job satisfaction and work engagement are both the factors that affect the improvement of employees’ performance. What is important is the role of an important factor called fun at work, which is ignored by organizations. Based on the findings of recent studies, fun at work and innovative behavior are factors influencing job satisfaction and work engagement. It seems that few studies have been done investigating the role of fun at work its positive consequences such as innovative behavior on job satisfaction. Accordingly, this study aims to investigate this phenomenon. Fun at work is especially more important for organizations operating in the service sector such as municipalities which are mainly dependent on human resource and carry out extensive tasks to serve the citizens, and provide conditions which improve employees’ performance. There is no exception about Municipality of Mashhad. Mashhad municipality managers believe that job dissatisfaction and reduced work engagement of employees have decreased productivity and quality of service delivery to citizens. In this regard, this research has been carried out in the municipality of Mashhad. In addition, we tried to study the impact of fun at work on job satisfaction and work engagement of employees and examine the role of innovative behavior of employees as a mediator. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK: During the last decade, managerial studies have focused on fun at work. A variety of studies show the importance of fun at work as one of the dimensions of the workplace and also as a factor which makes different outcoms of work place. Fluegge (2008, 2014) defines fun at work as a work activity; an interpersonal and social work at the workplace, which has a joyful nature and enhances the entertainment and pleasure of individuals. This definition is consistent with previous definitons provided by MacDowell (2004), Becker (2012), Lim and Meeks (2009), and McLaughlin and Newstar (2003). In various studies, the factors influencing innovative behavior have been investigated at three levels of analysis: individual level, work group, and organization. Anderson, De Dreu & Nijstad (2004) presented a summary of their findings on the factors influencing innovation including self-esteem, and initiative, motivational and cognitive abilities at the individual level, job characteristics at work level, factors such as team atmosphere and the characteristics of the team members at team level, and ultimately factors such as culture, strategy and structure affecting innovation at the organizational level. Job satisfaction is one of the important factors in increasing productivity, employee commitment, attachment to the workplace, improving the quality and quantity of work, establishing good and human relationships in the workplace, and increasing interest in the work. It refers to positive or pleasing feelings of persons coming from evaluateing their job or their job experience. The widespread study of the literature on job satisfaction and related concepts from Weiss (2002) suggest that not only does job satisfaction include a positive attitude toward the job, but also a person's positive feelings towards that job. Work engagement is basically a motivating entity that shows the individuals' willingness to devote themselves entirely to work. Work engagement refers to the identification purpose and focusing on organizational goals. Jahangir, Khorakian and Lagzzian (2016) studied the effect of work attachment on innovative behavior with the mediating role of error sharing. The results of their research showed that work engagement has a positive and significant effect on the sharing of errors and the production of the ideas. The present study has an applied and survey-analytical purpose. The survey population of this study is the employees of Municipality of Mashhad which includes experts, district officials and heads of departments with a total number of 340. The sample size included 181 individuals which was determined using Morgan table. They were selected using simple random sampling method. The questionnaire was a lickert scale and consisted of 31 items and four dimesnions of fun at work, innovative behavior, work engagement and job satisfaction. In this research, fun at work was measured using the four subscales of McDowell (2004). Fun at work scale includes socializing with coworkers, celebrating at work, personal freedoms and global fun at work. Eighteen items derived from McDowell's (2004) study have been used to measure this variable. Work engagement measurements were measured using six items of Rich, Lepine & Crawford (2010) study. In order to measure the innovative behavior, four items derived from Fluegge’s (2008) study have been used. After collecting data, structural validity was calculated using confirmatory factor analysis in AMOS software. The results of the confirmatory factor analysis for the items in the questionnaire were less than 0.05, and therefore the significance of the items was confirmed. The findings of this study are consistent with the literature on workplace fun confirming the positive outcomes of fun at work. Fun at work has a positive and significant effect on job satisfaction and employees’ work engagement. On the other hand, the positive influence of fun at work on innovative behavior was also confirmed. The results of this study are consistent with the results of other studies. In Fluegge's (2008, 2014) research, there is also a positive and significant correlation between fun at work and innovative behavior. It can be argued that fun at work is a source for creative and innovative divergent thinking. Fun at work has a positive and significant effect on job satisfaction. Job stress will decrease and positive feelings about work will increase if the working process is enjoyable for people. The positive and significant relationship between fun at work and work engagement is consistent with the results of previous studies. For example, Ching (2010) concluded that employees who experience fun at work are more satisfied about their job. Previous studies including Fluegge (2008, 2014) and MacDowell (2004) show that there is a strong relationship between fun at work and work engagement; thus, it can be said that fun at work plays an important role in increasing employees’ engagement. CONCLUSIONS & SUGGESTIONS : The results of this study, like other previous studies, indicate the great impact of fun at work on job performance. Fun at work has both a direct and indirect impact on job satisfaction and work engagement. In addition, the positive and significant positive effects of innovative behavior on job satisfaction and work engagement of municipality employees in Mashhad were also confirmed. Fun at work is influential in enhancing the innovative behavior of the municipality's employees in Mashhad. On the other hand, people who experience fun at work are also more likely to be more engaged with their work and therefore are more creative. In this research, work engagement is considered as the cognitive outcome of fun at work. Fun at work acts as a positive job resource, whereby employees find the ability to regain energy and focus on their work. Since fun at work is part of the work activity and it is emphasized that it is not considered as opposite to work, both of them are not counter productive of a spectrum. It can also be suggested that work-oriented meetings be hold with the aim of solving the problem or provideing ideas for improving performance outside the office space and in a fun and friendly atmosphere with the presence of managers. Based on the demand-source model which refers to job resources such as physical, social, psychological or organizational dimensions of the occupation, fun at work reduces job demands, and increases individual learning, goal achieving, and also work engagement of employees.