Constructive uses of online recreation and play can enhance many workplaces (especially high-tech and information-saturated ones) and perhaps ultimately make them more productive | 46 Oravec ChapterIII When Work Morphs into Play Using Constructive Recreation to Support the Flexible Workplace Jo Ann Oravec University of Wisconsin - Whitewater USA ABSTRACT Organizations have become more permeable integrating more influences from the outside world as participants engage in such online diversions as trading stocks engaging in multiplayer games or viewing images of their children in daycare. Availability of these activities has brought the potential for abuse but also new opportunities. Constructive uses of online recreation and play can enhance many workplaces especially high-tech and information-saturated ones and perhaps ultimately make them more productive. Human resource HR professionals can become active in exploring and tailoring constructive recreation strategies for Copyright 2004 Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. Using Constructive Recreation to Support the Flexible Workplace 47 specific workplace contexts. Many organizational roles today demand high levels of creativity and mental flexibility and constructive uses of online recreation can help individuals gain fresh perspectives. This chapter proposes that these complex issues be resolved through participatory approaches involving workgroups and HR professionals in discussions as to what constitutes constructive recreation as well as in development and dissemination of effective and fair organizational policies. INTRODUCTION Issues concerning the boundaries between work and play have provided continuing struggles for managers and employees as well as headaches for human resource HR professionals. Sociologist Donald Roy 1959-1960 used the banana time notion to capture how employees have made workplaces more tolerable by participating in off-task camaraderie. Banana time was the collectively determined break time of factory workers the start of which was signaled with a lunchbox banana. .
