Workplace Fun, Organizational Inclusion and Meaningful Work: an Empirical Study

This paper addresses nurses working in public hospitals in order to find out how workplace fun may affect their perception of both organizational inclusion and meaningful work. Moreover, and given the novelty of organizational inclusion (OI) and meaningful work, more specifically in the context of developing countries, the authors explore the relationship between OI and meaningful work. A total of 360 questionnaires were collected from nurses in public hospitals in Egypt. The authors used SmartPLS 3 since it has less restrictions regarding complex models, non-normal data, small samples and is appropriate for higher-order constructs (Hair et al. 2017). The findings show that workplace fun has positive effects on organizational inclusion and meaningful work for nurses. Moreover, organizational inclusion positively affects meaningful work for nurses.


Introduction
Given the turbulent changes in organizational contexts, including calls for profit maximisation, aggressive competition and the discourse on global recession, workplace fun has become more important than ever before (Burke & NG, 2006). Authors such as Owler et al. (2010), Plester and Hutchison (2016a, b), and Chan and Mak (2016) highlight that this concept has started to receive considerable attention from business practitioners and companies such as IBM and Google, that not only document workplace fun among their organizational values but also promote it as a paradigm for enhancing organizational effectiveness. Karl and Peluchette (2006a) highlight that workplace fun activities, which include, but are not limited to, recognition awards, parties, and social gatherings, not only fuel employee performance but also promote harmony in the workplace. Plester (2009a, b) asserts the complexity of the concept of workplace fun. Fluegge (2008) confirms that this multi-layered concept is continuously associated with pleasure, comfortableness, informality, curiosity, and sometimes play. Ford et al. (2003, p. 22) define workplace fun as "a variety of enjoyable and pleasurable activities that positively affect the attitude and productivity of individuals and groups". Furthermore, Fluegge (2008, p. 15) view it as "any social, interpersonal or task activities at work of a playful or humorous nature which provides an individual with amusement, enjoyment or pleasure". For Plester and Hutchison (2016a, b), workplace fun entails the following three forms: first, managed fun which reflects official deliberate fun that contributes to achieving strategic company objectives. Second, organic fun, which reflects fun that occurs intentionally or unintentionally among employees and often comes as a result for their interactions. And third, task fun, which reflects the enjoyable parts of job duties.
According to Bolton and Houlihan (2009), workplace fun is usually developed as a part of the HR strategies an organization adopts or sometimes creates as a managerial intervention. Chan (2010) elaborates that workplace fun can be guided by staff, managers or even the surrounding social context. Chan and Mak (2016) classify workplace fun into the following four types: fun as containment, fun as alleviation, fun as engagement, and fun as a developmental reward. Owler et al. (2010) assert the difficulty of addressing workplace fun academically because of the fact that the perception of workplace fun differs from one employee to another. What makes one person smile does not necessarily have to amuse or surprise others. Furthermore, the organizational culture differs from one organizational setting to another. Accordingly, empirical studies on workplace fun are considered a challenge by different academics and management scholars.
From another perspective, the workplace is really important in a person's life. Chen et al. (2018) indicate that working hours constitute at least one-third of daily life. Morin (2004) highlights that work is a liaison between an employee and his/her society and a mechanism through which he/she contributes to the betterment of the world. Work is vital not only because it provides a means of earning money, but also because it plays a role in the fulfilment of human needs by constituting status, ensuring human interaction and strengthening identity (Arnold et al., 2007). Arnold et al. (2007) affirms the importance of intrinsic work outcomes, such as the role of work in maintaining employee dignity. Sverko and Vizek-vidovic (1995) point out that work is essential to give us a sense of meaning and achievement. May et al. (2004) regard meaningfulness as an antecedent of the employee's emotional attachment to the workplace. Arnold et al. (2007) consider meaningful work as a motivator for work accomplishments and a solid buffer against hardships.
According to Steger (2017), meaningful work is part of organizational psychology and is presented as a subset of the need for self-actualisation proposed by Maslow (1943). Chalofsky (2003) indicates that the meaning of work differs from one person to another based on one's experiences. The concept of meaningful work has been referred to as "the degree to which the employee experiences the job as one which is generally meaningful, valuable and worthwhile" (Hackman & Oldham, 1975, p. 161). It is considered by May et al. (2004, p. 14) as "the value of a work goal or purpose, judged in relation to an individual's own ideas or standards". May et al. (2014, p. 652) indicate that it involves "physical welfare, complex work that provides opportunities for growth and self-expression, emotional engagement and financial security". Asik-Dizdar and Esen (2016, p.5) describe it as a "positive association between the work individuals engage in and the rewarding outcomes they receive such as happiness, efficacy, satisfaction, among others".
Given that both workplace fun and meaningful work are new to a range of Egyptian organizational settings, particularly public ones, and that studies on them are scarce in the Egyptian health care sector, the authors approached nurses in a number of public hospitals in Egypt seeking, first, to explore the effects of workplace fun on organizational inclusion and meaningful work. It should be noted that in the 2019 Global Competitiveness Report, which is prepared annually by the World Economic Forum, Egypt was recorded as one of the 20 worst countries in terms of ensuring and securing labour rights (http:// www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_TheGlobalCompetitivenessReport2019.pdf). Moreover, Egypt maintains an awful history in violating human rights, judicial independence and social inclusion. The remainder of this paper is structured as follows: the authors start with a literature review and presenting their hypotheses, then, the study's design and results are presented, and lastly, the discussion, implications, and limitations and potential avenues for future research.

Workplace Fun
McDowell (2004), Warren and Fineman (2007a, b), and Plester and Hutchison (2016a, b) indicate that what constitutes fun for some organizational members may be perceived as silly for others. Moreover, a growing body of empirical studies shows a positive relationship between workplace fun and both creativity and employee morale (Holmes & Marra, 2002;Romero & Cruthirds, 2006). Martin (2001), Martin et al. (2003), andMesmer-Magnus et al. (2012) indicate that both employee and leader humour positively correlate with employee health outcomes (e.g. stress), job satisfaction, and follower approval. Newstrom (2002), Guerrier and Adib (2003), and Ford et al. (2003) show that the implementation of workplace fun guarantees group cohesiveness, effective diversity management, job satisfaction, and quality of work life. Moreover, a growing number of studies address the association between workplace fun and employee creativity (Pryor et al., 2010), employee well-being (Karl and Peluchette, 2006a, b), and employee performance (Stromber & Karlsson, 2009). Furthermore, Karl et al. (2005) examine the association between workplace fun and employee performance. Karl and Peluchette (2006a,b) address its effect on employee well-being. Bolton and Houlihan (2009) elaborate that workplace fun continuously secures positive organizational outcomes such as job involvement and engagement.

Workplace Fun and Organizational Inclusion
According to Berger (1997) and Holmes (2007), workplace fun is part of an organization's culture and its subsequent assumptions, values and artefacts. The pattern of fun differs from one context to another (Holmes and Marra, 2002). Furthermore, patterns of fun are usually transferred from one employee to another only through human interactions occurring in workplace settings (Plester, 2009a, b). Both Handy (1993) and Plester (2009b) indicate that the degree of formality an organization exercises and the organizational structure it maintains largely determine the level, scope, and paradigm of workplace fun. The latter can be created and/or introduced by managers and/or employees (Plester, 2009a, b). Svebak (1974) finds that the sense of humour includes the ability to notice humorous stimuli, the tendency to appreciate the role of humour in one's life, and the ability to support and utilise the emotions associated with humour. Noblet et al. (2006) and Morphet (2008) raise the question of whether workplace fun is applicable to public sector employees. Morphet (2008) elaborates that employees who serve the public sector are similar to those in the private sector regarding today's work challenges marked by anxiety, stress, and burnout. Morphet (2008) highlights that new governance structures, funding possibilities, and mechanisms of service delivery in the public sector have reframed the responsibilities, duties, and tasks of public servants. This may explain why concepts such as work-life balance, workplace happiness, and workplace fun have started to emerge in public administration literature (Mousa, 2018;. Accordingly, workplace fun is no longer seen as an optional extra but a priority in today's work life. However, some stakeholders consider spending on the fun and humour among public servants to be nothing more than a misuse of public funds (Baptiste, 2009).
Over the past two decades, the concept of organizational inclusion has become a trend in management research agenda (Mousa, 2020b). Initially, it attracted researchers from different academic disciplines (Holck et al., 2016). Ylostola (2016) considers organizational inclusion as a revised view of some work-related concepts and/or behaviours such as in-out group favouritism, justice in the workplace and even diversity management. Jr. and Kmec highlight that organizational inclusion remains a postponed dream at different workplaces despites the ongoing invitations to implement it. Previous literature (e.g. Mousa and Puhakka, 2019;Mor Barak, 2015;Daya, 2014) point out that it is not only about demographic change, many Western governments have made considerable efforts over the last two decades to promote immigration and then launch educational programmes tailored to accelerate the integration of these immigrants into their new societies. Responsively, different organizations have included organizational inclusion as a part of their organizational strategies and/or values (Bilimoria et al., 2008). Mor Barak (2000Barak ( , 2015 considers organizational inclusion as a make-up process through which the organization accepts, respects and appreciates dissimilarities among its staff and subsequently maintains a climate of equality, justice and neutral communication. According to Mor Barak and Cherin (1998, p.48), organizational inclusion reflects "the degree to which employees feel a part of critical organizational processes such as access to information and resources, involvement in work groups and the ability to influence the decision-making process". Shore et al. describes organizational inclusion as a sense of belongingness an employee may experience in his or her workplace. In this vein, Daya (2014) assumes that workplace diversity and organizational inclusion are not similar even if they are used interchangeably by some authors. Daya (2014), further, elaborates that diversity reflects the visible (age, gender, etc.) and invisible (sexual orientation, income, etc.) differences that exist among individuals, whereas inclusion reflects the level of respect and appreciation toward such differences. The same is asserted by Kreitz (2008) and Roberson (2006), who indicate that diversity describes the demographic differences among individuals, whereas organizational inclusion represents the psychological attitudes toward such demographic differences. Mousa et al. (2020), Le et al. (2018), and Sabharwal (2014) indicate that adopting organizational inclusion entails employee feelings of involvement, loyalty, satisfaction, performance, workplace happiness and, subsequently, corporate profits.
In Welzel's theory of emancipation (2013), human empowerment is based on emancipative values (psychological stimulation) and civic entitlements (removal of institutional boundaries), among others. Initiating workplace fun reflects not only psychological stimulation but also a removal of institutional barrierssomething that activates employee contributions to maintaining their organization's continuity through their sense of engagement and involvement. Therefore, it is hypothesized that: & H1: Workplace fun has a positive effect on nurses' feeling of organizational inclusion.

Workplace Fun and Meaningful Work
According to Michaelson and Ayers et al. (2008), the subjective view of meaningfulness is often perceived in terms of self-esteem, dignity, and economic status for the employee in meaningful work. Rosso et al. indicate that the four sources of meaningful work are i) the employee himself, ii) surrounding stakeholders, iii) work context, and iv) spiritual life, while Bailey et al. (2016) articulate that the four sources for creating meaningfulness are i) work tasks, ii) work role, iii) interactions with stakeholders, and iv) the organization the employee works in. Rosso et al. and Bailey et al. (2016) distinguish between the meaning of work which yields a sense of something and meaningful work which is the degree to which one's work is significant and includes a positive contribution to the betterment of people and society. This justifies why some white-collar jobs may not be seen as meaningful to the holder and others, whereas some simple jobs, such as cleaning and catering might be perceived as meaningful for some people (Lips-Wiersma et al., 2016). Steger et al. (2012) point out that meaningful work can be seen in terms of the following three dimensions: i) positive meaning in work, which reflects the extent to which the individual finds their work to have significance, ii) meaning making, which reflects the extent to which the employee believes that his work contributes to the betterment of humanity (people and society), and iii) greater good motivation, which reflects the extent to which the employee believes that his work only includes a positive contribution to humanity. Therefore, it is hypothesized that:

Organizational Inclusion and Meaningful Work
From another perspective, Castilla and Benard (2010) highlight that the implementation of organizational inclusion may sometimes entail opposite results. They suggest that undertaking inclusive work policies may discourage some employees from reporting biased, discriminatory, and negative prejudice towards women, disabled, and ethnic minorities. Thomas (2002) and Booysen (2007) posit that organizational inclusiveness, which is seen as a subset of the overall organizational strategy, is consistently viewed as a result of collaboration between senior management, human resources, and finance personnel. Michaelson et al. (2014, p. 88) state that "in any society where work is unavoidable and necessary, meaningful work and research at the intersection of organization studies and business ethics can be an important catalyst to preserve and promote a just society that supports meaningful lines for its citizens". Therefore, many authors link meaningful work with related employee feelings and attitudes, such as job satisfaction (Steger et al., 2012), feelings of dignity (Morin, 2004), alleviation of stress (Britt et al., 2001), and increased morale (Britt et al., 2007). Steger et al. (2012) highlight that meaningful work is not about what work means to the employee, instead it describes the extent to which the employee believes that his/her work/job is significant and has a positive effect on people and society.
In Welzel's theory of emancipation (2013), human empowerment is mainly based on action resources (socio-economic capabilities), emancipative values (psychological stimulation), and civic entitlements (removal of institutional boundaries such as workplace discrimination, bias, and negative prejudice). Implementing organizational inclusion, which removes bias and workplace discrimination, may assist in supporting employee dignity, self-esteem and other feelings of meaningfulness. Therefore, it is hypothesized that:

Research Methodology
Sample This study has collected data from nurses working in different public hospitals in Egypt. The authors distributed questionnaires after obtaining permission from the top managers in those hospitals. The authors collected 360 responses. The following table displays more information about the participants Table 1.

Measures
All measures are adapted from previous studies (see Table 2). Previous literature indicates the multidimensional conceptualisation of meaningful work. The latter is composed of three first-order constructs that include i) positive meaning, ii) meaning making through work, and iii) greater good motivations (Steger et al., 2012).

Assessment of the Measurement Model
To test the model, we used SmartPLS 3, which suitable since it is less restrictive regarding complex models, non-normal data, and sample size and is appropriate for higher-order models (Hair et al., 2017). As shown in Table 3, all Cronbach's alphas, rho_A (ρ A ), and composite reliability values are above the threshold of 0.7, reflecting internal consistency and reliability (Hair et al., 2017). Moreover, all outer loadings have satisfactory values and are significant (p < 0.001) demonstrating indicator reliability (Hair et al., 2017). In addition, all AVE values are well above the threshold of 0.5, showing convergent validity. As shown in Table 3, the heterotrait-monotrait (HTMT) values are lower than the conservative threshold of 0.85 and statistically different from 1 (no sign changes option, bias-corrected and accelerated (BCa)) reflecting discriminant validity (Hair et al., 2017).

Assessment of the Structural Model
As shown in Table 4, workplace fun has positive and significant effects on organizational inclusion, positive meaning, meaning making through work, and greater good motivations To assess the model's in-sample fit, we calculate the R 2 . The model explains 52.3%, 42.2%, 39.2%, and 40.3% of the variance in organizational inclusion, positive meaning, meaning making through work, and greater good motivations, respectively. Moreover, we assess the out-of-sample predictive power by using the PLSpredict procedure with 10 folds and 10 repetitions (Shmueli et al., 2019). The model has high predictive relevance since i) all the Q 2 predict values (0.456, 0.289, 0.281, and 0.293 for organizational inclusion, positive meaning, meaning making through work, and greater good motivations, respectively) are well above zero, and ii) PLS-SEM has a better root mean square error (RMSE) / mean absolute error (MAE) for the indicators of positive meaning, meaning making through work, and greater good motivations compared to the linear model (LM) benchmark (see Table 5) (Shmueli et al., 2019) Table 6.

Discussion
The results show that workplace fun has a positive effect on feelings of organizational inclusion among nurses. This is in line with Newstorm (2002) and Karl et al. (2007), who indicate that workplace fun stimulates group cohesiveness and effective management of diverse employees. The mechanism through which workplace fun is effectively implemented and subsequently satisfies employees relies to a great extent on the degree of formality organizations (hospitals in this case) exercise. This justifies why Welzel (2013), in his emancipation theory, indicates that the removal of structural barriers (bias and negative prejudice), secured through the adoption of organizational inclusion, constantly activates positive feelings and civic entitlement. The results also show that workplace fun has a positive effect on the feeling among nurses that their work is meaningful. The authors think that the result is in line with emancipation theory (Welzel, 2013), which states that action resources (socioeconomic capabilities) and emancipative values (psychological stimulation) play a role in shaping employee satisfaction and empowerment. Workplace fun, which is not only limited to recognition awards, parties and social gatherings (Karl & Peluchette, 2006b), stimulates employee feelings of dignity, appreciation, and other intrinsic components of  Steger et al. (2012) meaningful work articulated by May et al. (2004), Arnold et al. (2007) and Chen et al. (2018). This explains why workplace fun positively affects the sense of meaningful work. Furthermore, workplace fun can be organized by the management, employees, and/or built into task duties, which could be also said about meaningful work, as it mostly relies on the following four sources: employees, stakeholders, work context and spiritual life in order to be created. The idea that meaningful work is more about connection and contribution on the one hand, and is seen as part of the need for self-actualisation on the other (Maslow, 1943) fuels the belief that workplace fun, which is associated with curiosity, pleasure and comfortableness, plays a role in developing and enhancing this meaningfulness.    (Ylostola, 2016), and increases employee's feelings of respect, dignity, appreciation, and solidarity (Daya, 2014;Mor Barak, 2015;Mousa & Puhakka, 2019;Mousa et al., 2020). Such positive feelings among employees are what meaningfulness seeks to secure, as both Michaelson and Ayers et al. (2008) indicate that meaningful work mostly results in self-esteem, dignity, appreciation, and recognition.

Practical Implications
Based on the results of the study, the authors recommend that public hospital administrations include workplace fun in the values and strategies of their hospitals. This involves an ongoing policy to manage fun activities (e.g. performance awards, recognition awards, social gatherings, etc.). Moreover, and as shown in the results, the sense of dignity and respect received by nurses requires the effective adoption of organizational inclusion. The authors therefore ask why the hospitals do not implement organizational inclusion, fun, and meaningfulness management units, which would positively impact the performance of their nurses and subsequently, their loyalty, commitment, and citizenship behaviour.

Theoretical Contribution
In addition to the authors' attempt to focus on recent publications on workplace fun (Plester and Hutchison, 2016a, b;Owler et al., 2010;Tews et al., 2012), meaningful  (Chen et al., 2018;Bailey et al., 2016;Steger et al., 2012) and organizational inclusion (Mousa et al., 2020;Mousa, 2020b;Mousa & Puhakka, 2019), they employ emancipation theory, which addresses what the organization should secure to elicit psychological stimulation, removal of institutional barriers, and socioeconomic capabilities by addressing the relationship between workplace fun, organizational inclusion, and meaningful work. This theory was first introduced by Welzel (2013) when addressing organizational inclusion. This paper is the first to use emancipation theory to explore the relationship between workplace fun and meaningful work. Consequently, this paper adds a further angle to Welzel's theory of emancipation (2013).

Conclusion
This study focused on nurses in Egyptian public hospitals and based on the statistical analysis of the data from collected questionnaire forms, the authors found that workplace fun has a positive effect on organizational inclusion and meaningful work among nurses. Moreover, organizational inclusion positively affects nurses' meaningful work.

Limitations and Avenues for Future Research
This study has some limitations that should be taken into consideration. First, the study focuses only on nurses without considering physicians and administrators (working in the same hospitals). Second, the study focused on public hospitals without considering private ones. This limits the generalizability of the results. Future studies could test the model in private hospitals in order to gain a more in-depth insight regarding the relationship between the variables. Moreover, testing the same hypotheses in other organizational settings, such as universities, schools, and other commercial and not-forprofit organizations would improve our understanding of those organizational factors.

Compliance with Ethical Standards
Ethical Approval This article does not contain any studies on animals performed by any of the authors. Consent was obtained from all individual participants for participating in this study.
Conflict of Interest I hereby assert that my paper has not any conflict of interest.