Understanding the Concept of Flow in Organizational Behavior and Design

This essay explores the concept of flow and its relationship with achievement orientation in organizational behavior and design. It discusses the characteristics of flow, the relationship between achievement orientation and flow, and the advantages of understanding flow for professionals in contemporary organizations.

Organizational Behavior and Design
Essay
System04104
2/14/2019

Concept of Flow
According to the original definition of Csikeszentmihalyi (1975), flow refers to a
situation when a person deeply involved and immersed in an activity with high level of
concentration and determination and the person does not care about other things or situation.
It means that a person gets involved in an activity in such a way that nothing else seems to be
a matter at the time (Csikszentmihalyi & Wong, 2014). Csikeszentmihalyi described that
‘Flow’ is a state of consciousness where attention is undivided and motivates action to fulfil
the goal of expressing self (Csikszentmihalyi, 2013). This means the person is fully involved
in a particular activity that he/she performed within a timeframe. Flow plays an important
role in the creativity and innovative thought of mind in a human being (Bonewell, 2017). The
author said that people feel happy, enjoy, and relax when they feel that they are involved in
this state of flow. It has been observed that the state of flow happens under some specific
conditions – when a person encounters a challenge that is testing his /her skills and the skills
and capacities of that person are capable of meeting this challenge (Wrigley & Emmerson,
2013). Then it can be said that the skills of the person and challenges are both at the high
levels and these two factors stretching the person almost to the limit. If the level of challenges
surpasses the capacity of skills, then a person becomes anxious. If level of skills exceeded the
challenges, a person usually becomes bored, for instance a bright kid at the school). However,
neither of these two situation results in flow, because flow needs the same level of challenge
and skills of an individual, who stretches himself to encounter the challenge and enjoy the
work. After many pieces of search and interviews of chess players, ballet dancers, tennis
players, doctors and surgeons, and some other professionals, Csikszentmihalyi found that
‘Flow’ is a universal process, which has several vital characteristics.
1. Full concentration on the task: When a person is performing a task or an activity in
flow state, then there is no place in his/her mind to think about other things. It means
the person is fully concentrated on a single task at a time rather than diver their mind
in their other activities.
2. Clarity of goals, intrinsic rewarding, and immediate feedback: In this state of
flow, a person exactly knows what he/she is doing and what he has to achieve, and the
person knows exactly what is going on in the current activity, whether the person is
winning or losing (Wong & Csikszentmihalyi, 2014).

3. A sense of control: If a person is in a sense of control, then he/she never worries
about the consequences and person is also not worries about the failure, neither he/she
think about others that what other person is doing.
4. Transformation of time: Generally, time passes more than a greater pace than
expected and vice a versa is also true. Therefore, a person exactly knows how and
when the time is speeding up and when it will slow down.
5. There is a balance between challenge and skills.
6. Action and awareness are merged when losing self-conscious rumination.
7. People in the “flow” state of mind, he/she feeling full control over the task (Positive
Psychology Program, 2019).
One of the major characteristics of this state of mind when a person is in a flow that is totally
absent of emotions during the actual process, or activities that a person is performing. A
person who is in ‘flow', finds himself almost beyond experiencing emotions because the
awareness of self is not present. Flow is also associated with a deep work effort in which people
are trying to complete his/her job with great concentration and determination while performing the job
that pushes the intellectual and mental capabilities of an individual up to the limits or beyond of the
limits. It has been also observed that complex task or those tasks, which includes a high level
of risk, required a greater level of concentration than those whose weak task orientation and
low-risk activities (Nakamura & Csikszentmihalyi, 2009). The flow literature and research
would suggest that such level of state of mind enables a person to a high level of performance
or produce flow experience that helps in goal orientation approach of that particular person.
The relationship between Achievement Orientation and Flow
Achievement orientation means how a person or an individual reacts and interprets to
the task, resulting in different patterns of cognition, affect, and behaviour. When a person
feels that he/she is strong in the achievement orientation competency, the person strives to
meet or exceed the standard of excellence. In an organisation, it is more beneficial when
people set their goals and balance their personal drive to achieve it. Research says that such
state of mind is required for peak performance (Michels, 2018). People, who find themselves
in a flow state of mind, are feeling motivated and self-control over the goal what they set
earlier (Cherry, 2018). The people, who are in the flow and perform a particular activity,
enjoy the process and activities without any concern for extrinsic rewards. As it has been
noted and observed by various psychologists that flow state is associated with a higher level

of performance of an individual, these people also show a greater commitment towards the
goal, and objective they set (Cole, Ito, Bassett, & Schultz, 2016). For example, an athlete who
is in a flow state, are known to display a great level of commitment in the activity, more
intrinsically motivated, and also shows a greater level of persistence in their sports practice,
and each action reduces the likelihood of his/her failure in that particular sport or activities.
Those athletes who had tougher jobs realized the superior level of attentiveness than those
who had weaker job orientation.
People who are in the flow state, always do things in such a way that helps it achieve
the goal they set in advance. The flow state positively correlated with achievement
orientation. Actually, ‘flow' creates a way that enables a person to achieve the target without
losing their concentration (Senko, Hulleman, & Harackiewicz, 2011). The flow state is
beneficial for the contemporary organisations as well because it helps the employees to focus
on their target work, and it helps them to analyse the work progress by keeping the timeframe
in the mind. The intrinsic reward approach of people motivates people from inside towards
the achievement orientation and does not expect an extrinsic reward for motivation (Michels,
2018). Flow helps a man to fully involved and concentrated approach towards the
organisational objectives and goals. Although people who are self-aware and self-determined
because of a flow state of mind, not stopped until they get success and achieve the final
objective. This approach helps the organisational people to perform their best in the
organisation and achieve the target within the required timeframe without losing
concentration. Van de pol and Kvusssanu (2011) said in his research, that task orientation is
totally related to the enjoyment, which is narrowly related to the flow, and ego orientation
provide a negative correlation between the enjoyment and inclusive intrinsic motivation. The
flow theory enables a person to more focus and involved in the task at hand, and is fully
immersed in the activity that the person is performing. A person is feeling in control and
more aware of the situation when he found himself in a flow state.
Overall, from the study of above facts, we can say that there has been a positive
correlation between the flow and achievement orientation approach of a person, where a high
level of flow enables a person to higher engagement and involvement in the task. Which
further result in that the person performs and achieves the desired result with great effort that
is equal to the standard limits or beyond of the standard limits (Seligman, &
Csikszentmihalyi, 2014). We can also say that the flow experience based on the goal
orientation and supported the person to being a focus on the task and in this state of mind

person feels skilful enough to manage the demand of competition or challenges he/she face
during performing the activity.
Advantages of understanding the concept of flow for professionals in
contemporary organisations
It has been seen in the organisations that happy workers perform better than the
unhappy workers or average workers. According to a survey, it has been observed that happy
workers are 12% more productive than average workers are, and 22% more productive than
unhappy ones. Apart from this, people who are not fully involved in the work or disengaged
workers cost high production cost for the organisation (Krueger, 2015). Thus, for an
organisation and it is also important for a manager to seriously figure out these types of
situations that take place in the organisation and decrease the productivity, because the
longevity of these problems causes organisation at serious risk if a manager gets fail to notice
these things. The flow state of mind helps employees to feel active and continuously engaged
with their goals and achievement-oriented objectives within the organisation that further
result in a high level of productivity and job involvement of people in the organisation.
Employees who feel and experience themselves in a flow state of mind, always care
about the future of their company and stay loyal to their company by actively engage
themselves in their assigned jobs. In this era, where organisations fight together to recruit and
retain skilled workers and it becomes a global problem in the organisation, it is important for
an organisation to find out crucial ways keep people happy in the organisation. The flow state
of mind helps in spreading happiness among the employees by giving them freedom in their
jobs. The flow state also enabled them to do their work in their own way and make their
decisions according to the situation (Seo, 2011). This practice in the organisation results in a
high level of responsiveness among the organisational people and their determination towards
the work. Although, the negative aspect of this thing is that people do not concentrate on
other work and only focus on a particular work that is in their hand. The flow state of mind
among people results in a positive attitude that further results in the high-level of work
performance and productivity. In the flow state, people feel and experience the highest level
of happiness and enjoyment at work and they feel in these moments as true happiness and
give a reason for the manager to utilise this time for their greatest productivity (Wicher,
2017).

It can be said that flow can happen with almost any activities in the organisation and
in fact with every person at a particular time. It is the way that set the tune for the
organisational people to decide which job they can give their best and enjoys the work by
rejecting all other works. It is found in the flow opportunity that people do the job more
effectively despite being any care for their designation in the organisation. Flow is also
associated with a deep work effort in which people are trying to complete his/her job with
great concentration and determination, while performing the job that push the intellectual and
mental capabilities of an individual up to the limits or beyond of the limits (Ullén, de
Manzano, Theorell, & Harmat, 2010).
The problem with the flow is that it does not come in a person at a very cheap level;
rather it requires some extrinsic motivation and a number of external factors that boost the
will and capacity of work in employees in a flow state. Those factors that cause flow state in
the people are extremely rare in the modern days of the business world. Although these
factors play an important role in creating the condition that is required for flow to flourish, it
needed heavy cost for the organisation.

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