Boredom

Watt, Peter and Weibull, Fredrik (2024) Boredom. In: Encyclopedia of Organizational Psychology :. Edward Elgar. (In Press)

Abstract

This entry provides an overview of some of the dominant ways in which boredom has been conceptualized as an experience in contemporary workplaces. The entry begins by introducing boredom as a foundational theme in Organizational Psychology. This is followed by a brief history of the reasons for this before providing a summary of its key categorizations in Organizational Psychology and Management and Organization Studies. The entry introduces the concepts of individual’s ‘proneness’ to boredom at work, ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ understandings of boredom at work, and potential critiques of boredom at work, including approaches that have previously been undeveloped in the field at large. The final section introduces recent developments in studies of ‘Boredom at Work’ which seek to understand boredom as a deeper, more ‘profound’ category of human experience than dominant psychological perspectives tend to claim.