Workers’ Playtime?

This article examines the popular trend among management academics, consultants, and practitioners of prescribing “cultures of fun” to enhance productivity. This management approach suggests inter alia that organizations should break with the conventional wisdom of delineating work from play and instead craft an environment of fun and humor. Drawing on a field study of a communications firm, the article demonstrates how managed “fun” involves the symbolic blurring of traditional boundaries that usually distinguish work and nonwork. Typically nonwork experiences associated with family, lifestyle, consumption, and school are evoked to create a more pleasurable atmosphere. In the study however, this blurring had an unintended effect of fuelling cynicism among some employees. Although this cynicism probably has a number of sources, it is argued that its relationship to boundary management provides some interesting insights about the limitations of contemporary culture management.