Devote yourself to enjoy daily work: a diary study on flow experience and organizational identification

Purpose—This paper aims to examine the day-to-day within-person associations between employees’ flow experience and organizational identification within the rarely studied context of construction engineering project organizations. Design/methodology/approach—In this daily diary design, we surveyed 204 (Mage = 28.3, SD = 5.69) employees of a state-owned construction engineering project organization in southwest China via the online questionnaires comprising flow and organizational identification scales once daily on each workday for 3 consecutive weeks, which yielded 3060 data entries. We then tested the temporal directionality between flow and organizational identification with multilevel time-series cross-lagged path analysis using Mplus 8.3. Findings—Daily flow experience was linked positively with same-day organizational identification. Importantly, flow experience on the previous day predicted organizational identification on a subsequent day, but not vice versa. Practical implications—This study suggests that construction engineering project managers should implement interventions fostering the employees’ flow experience to promote organizational identification, with important implications for organizations aiming at flourishing workforces by facilitating organizational identification through implementing flow strategies. Originality/value—There is a dearth of diary studies on flow and organizational identification specific to construction engineering project employees. Our findings provide concrete evidence of the fluctuant nature of daily flow experience and organizational identification as well as their dynamic predictive pathway relationship.