Purpose – This extended editorial to the Special Issue “Are we having fun yet? A consideration of workplace fun and engagement” aims to review the current debates on organised “fun at work” and to suggest a framework for understanding workplace fun and employee engagement. The papers...

Purpose – The purpose of this short paper is to introduce the special issue and outline its major themes. Design/methodology/approach – The control‐resistance literatures are described, and the necessity for field‐led empirical accounts is amplified, as a precursor to introducing the...

The growth of service work has introduced the customer as a third party to the employment relationship. Yet dominant images of customer relations portray docile service workers offering de-personalized care to sometimes aggressive but otherwise not much more agential customers. This paper seeks...

Purpose – The purpose of this short paper is to introduce the special issue and outline its major themes. Design/methodology/approach – The control-resistance literatures are described, and the necessity for field-led empirical accounts is amplified, as a precursor to introducing the...

This article proposes the lens of moral economy as a useful ethical framework through which to assess HRM practice, with a particular focus on the strategic use of contingent work (‘non-standard’ employment practices including temporary, agency and outsourced work). While contingent work...

Purpose – The paper seeks to explore the nature and employee experience of an emergent approach to managing employees which emphasises “being yourself” through the expression of fun, individuality and difference. Design/methodology/approach – The paper utilises interviews and...

Purpose – This paper aims to present exploratory, empirical data from an ethnographic study into workplace humour and fun. It explores the notion that workplace humour and fun are influenced by the creation of boundaries that either enable or constrain activities. Design/methodology/approach...

Purpose – This paper aims to critically examine the dynamics of fun and well‐being at work, as experienced and perceived by senior managers in a public sector context. Design/methodology/approach – This paper is based on research into well‐being with a British Local Authority, focusing...

Purpose – This paper aims to investigate how generational differences moderate the relationship between workplace fun and individual workplace outcomes. Design/methodology/approach – The authors review and integrate the literatures on workplace fun and generational theory and empirically...

Purpose – This article seeks to analyse rituals of humour and joking practices among two groups of meatpacking workers, to better understand the organic dynamics of workplace fun. Design/methodology/approach – This is an ethnographic study of two groups of meatpacking workers within a...