Having Fun, Being Creative? The Roles of Motivation for Fun Activity and Performance Pressure

Organizations increasingly implement human resource (HR) nonwork fun activities to stimulate employee creativity, yet the literature offers mixed insights regarding their effectiveness. Drawing on self-determination theory and the Reflection and Evaluation Model, we examine how different types of motivation—controlled versus autonomous—behind participation in HR-initiated nonwork fun activity interacts with performance pressure to shape employee creativity. Using a multi-wave survey of 413 employees, we find that under high performance pressure, employees driven by controlled motivation for the fun activity paradoxically demonstrate heightened work engagement, which in turn enhances creativity. Conversely, high performance pressure attenuates the positive effect of the autonomous motivation on creativity through work engagement. This finding suggests a dynamic tension between different types of motivations for HR-initiated nonwork fun activity and performance pressure. Taken together, our results reveal that the effectiveness of HR-initiated nonwork fun activities in fostering creativity depends on the dynamic interaction between performance pressure and employees’ controlled or autonomous motivations, offering theoretical and practical insights into optimizing such HR practice to strategically adapting employees’ motivations with performance pressure in organizational contexts.