Understanding the Concept of Flow in Organizational Behavior and Design

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