How Workplace Fun Promotes Employees' Innovative Behavior: A Dual Mediation Model

This study examines how two types of workplace fun-sociality-oriented fun and assistant-oriented fun-relate to different forms of employees' innovative behavior through positive affect and job satisfaction, drawing on the Affective Events Theory and the motivational dimensional model of affect. Data were collected from 17 supervisors and 116 employees in a Chinese state-owned electric power company using a supervisor-subordinate dyadic survey procedure. Mplus 8.3 was used to test the hypothesized model. The results show that sociality-oriented fun is positively associated with affect-driven innovative behavior through high-motivated positive affect, whereas assistant-oriented fun is positively associated with judgment-driven innovative behavior through the serial mediating role of low-motivated positive affect and job satisfaction. These findings provide a more differentiated understanding of how workplace fun may shape employee innovation and offer practical implications for designing fun activities that align with different innovation goals.