The Power of Play in Organizations

Play is increasingly visible in contemporary organizations, yet it is often dismissed as peripheral to “serious” work. Challenging this view, this Special Issue advances an interdisciplinary understanding of workplace play as a consequential psychological, social, and organizational resource. Across four complementary articles using qualitative, experimental, and scale-development approaches, the Special Issue demonstrates that play enables authentic connection, fosters psychological safety and inclusion, supports proactive work redesign, and enhances motivation and well-being—while also being shaped and constrained by roles, diversity, power, and resource depletion. Collectively, the papers reposition play as relational infrastructure rather than frivolous diversion, highlighting its emergent, co-created, and context-dependent nature. Building on these insights, we outline a multilevel research agenda that examines how microepisodes of play accumulate into team climates, how contextual conditions enable or suppress play, and when play can backfire or reproduce inequality. Together, the contributions invite scholars to treat play as a central lens for understanding contemporary work.