Daydreaming at work: an overview of the literature and a descriptive analysis

Year 2025, Issue: 99, 253 - 273, 31.12.2025

Yonca Gürol , Perlin Naz Cömert

https://doi.org/10.26650/imj.2025.1678466

https://izlik.org/JA45ZZ26GT

Abstract

The concept of daydreaming, which is frequently studied in the psychology literature, has recently become prominent in the field of management due to its contributions to creativity. Daydreaming is an imaginative type of mind-wandering independent of the present task and environment that potentially facilitates the generation of new ideas and recall of work-related goals and problems by allowing for mental time travel. This study was conducted in two stages to investigate the concept of daydreaming, discuss daydreaming in the organisational context, examine its relationship with creativity, and examine the current status of daydreaming behaviour in organisations. In the first stage, we performed a narrative literature review of daydreaming to explore its evolution in the literature and synthesise the published research in this field of study. In the second stage, we collected survey data from 277 white-collar employees from various sectors and departments to conduct a descriptive analysis and examine the distribution of daydreaming behaviour in different departments, sectors, firm age and size, and employee experience. Finally, we combine and synthesise our literature review with descriptive analysis results to compare and complement the theoretical information on daydreaming with the descriptive dispersion of daydreaming in business life and explore new research avenues.

Keywords

Daydreaming , Narrative Literature Review , Descriptive Analysis

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