Humor in leadership and employee creative and innovative behavior

This paper is a review of existing studies on the relationship between humor in leadership and employee creativity, voice behavior, and innovative behavior. First, a meta-analytic review of zero-order correlations shows a medium-sized correlation between leader humor and creative/innovative behavior of employees. Secondly, the review shows that two distinct mediating mechanisms - a relational mechanism and a motivational, resource-based mechanism - might explain the correlation between leader humor and creative/innovative behavior. Existing studies thirdly show that moderator variables are relevant, but that the choice of variables does not yet allow for an overall picture. Unfortunately, the existing studies did widely neglect the incremental contribution of leader humor beyond other leadership constructs. The review ends with implications to guide future research on humor in leadership.

Leader humor: A double-edged sword

Leader humor has been considered one of the most promising yet least understood influential tools by psychologists and management scholars. Here, I review the growing body of research on leader humor and its implications for followers and organizations, showing that despite being theorized as a positive leadership tool, leader humor can function as a double-edged sword in bringing both beneficial and detrimental outcomes for followers and organizations.In the process, I identify six distinct mechanisms (three positive and three negative) through which leader humor affects followers. In a way, leader humor can be used to reduce or increase the social and psychological distance between leaders and followers. I also discuss the directions for future research on leader humor.

Humor research in management: Humor as Social Information (HASI)

Humor research is flourishing in Management. Diverse theories have been adopted and diverse factors have been used in research. Nonetheless, these disconnected efforts pose challenges to the development of a coherent body of knowledge on humor in organizational life. I propose the Humor-as-Social-Information (HASI) framework regarding the social effects of humor, and use it to guide my review on recent humor research in Management. Humor evokes affective and inferential processes leading to perceivers' cognitions and behaviors, and these processes are moderated by two sets of factors, including (1) information-processing motivation/ability and (2) humor inappropriateness. The proposed HASI framework highlights how humor exerts social influence within organizations, and paves new avenues for future research that will help further develop "humor science."

When and why are employees willing to engage in voice behavior: a power cognition perspective

Previous studies have found that sense of power is an important predictor of employee voice; however, the mechanism underlying the relationship between these factors remains unclear. To explore this mechanism, 642 valid questionnaires from 45 enterprises were used to conduct an empirical test based on the approach-inhibition theory of power. The results showed that sense of power can affect error risk taking positively, error risk taking mediates the relationship between sense of power and employee voice; and power congruence moderates both the direct relationship between sense of power and employee voice and their indirect relationship via error risk taking. This study thus provides a useful reference for improving employees' enthusiasm for voice behavior and can help enhance the competitiveness of enterprises.

Subordinates’ silence: the consequence of bullying behaviour and psychological insecurity among policemen

Purpose

There has been a growing concern about employee silence (ES) within an organization. ES is associated with low creativity and innovativeness, unethical organizational practices, avoidable errors and safety-related issues. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the mediating role of psychological insecurity (PI) in the relationship between leaders’ bullying behaviour (LBB) on defensive (DES) and acquiescent employee silence (AES).

Design/methodology/approach

Data were collected among police personnel working in Plateau state Nigeria. In all, a total of 350 responses were found useable for further analysis, of the 398 copies of the questionnaire administered. A structural equation modelling technique was used via SMART-PLS version 3.3.3 to test the hypothesized relationship.

Findings

The findings of this study revealed that leaders’ bullying positively and significantly influences both AES and DES, and PI was found to mediate the relationship between LBB and AES and DES.

Originality/value

LBB among the police has been under-researched, even when there is clear evidence of its existence. PI explains the mechanism through which LBB influences officers' silence.

Does My Humor Touch You? Effect of Leader Self-Deprecating Humour on Employee Silence: The Mediating Role of Leader-Member Exchange

Purpose

Silence is a typical negative behaviour exhibited by employees when they are faced with tension and stress and is influenced by a number of factors. Leaders have an important influence on employees' emotions and behaviour, but the research is not yet clear enough. In this paper, we focus on the research frontier of self-deprecating humour of leaders, aiming to analyse its effect on employee silence and discuss the mechanism of the role of leader-member exchange (LMX) in it, based on social exchange theory.

Methods

We conducted a regression analysis and bootstrap test for mediating effects based on 2531 data from 151 financial institutions in mainland China. A simple random sampling was taken of the target population to ensure an unbiased sample. Using Harman's single-factor test to check the data for common method bias. Regression analysis and Bootstrap test were used to analyze the correlation between variables and mediating effect models.

Findings

(a) Leader self-deprecating humour significantly reduces employee silence and effectively improves the quality of LMX; (b) There is a significant negative relationship between LMX and employee silence; (c) LMX plays a mediating role in the process of self-deprecating humour influencing employee silence and this mediating effect is complete; (d) Affective exchange between leaders and employees appears to be an essential factor in reducing stress from leaders and reducing employee silence.

Originality/Value

We attempt to open the black box of the mechanism of action between leader self-deprecating humour and employee silence, enrich and expand the application of social exchange theory to negative employee behavior, and provide new theoretical knowledge and empirical evidence from developing countries.

Practical Implications

The results of the study indicated that self-deprecating humor of leaders can significantly inhibit employee silence through high levels of LMX. Moreover, the mediating role played by LMX was complete. Therefore, organizations should not only focus on the role of leadership humor, but also to achieve mutual respect and trust between leaders and subordinates, and an emotional exchange that goes beyond economic relationships.

Leader humor and newcomer adjustment: The mediating role of role breadth self-efficacy

Purpose

Despite the increasingly growing empirical research on leader humor, the critical issue of how and when leader humor affects newcomer adjustment was largely overlooked. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between leader humor and newcomer adjustment. Based on social information processing theory, the authors identify newcomers' role breadth self-efficacy (RBSE) as the mediator and suggest that newcomers' cognitive flexibility moderates the effects.

Design/methodology/approach

Data were obtained from a 2-wave sample of 195 newcomers. The authors utilized the PROCESS procedure developed by Hayes to assess the hypothesized moderated mediation model.

Findings

The findings showed that leader humor could boost newcomers' RBSE which, in turn, was beneficial to newcomer adjustment. Besides, newcomers' cognitive flexibility plays a moderating role in the relationship between leader humor and newcomers' RBSE.

Research limitations/implications

This study utilized a cross-sectional research design, making the design difficult to obtain causal conclusions. Moreover, the data were all based on self-reports from newcomers, which may raise a concern of common method bias.

Originality/value

This paper extends the literature on leader humor and newcomer adjustment by treating RBSE as the mediator and newcomers' cognitive flexibility as the moderator. This study is one of several empirical studies to test the link between leader humor and newcomer adjustment.

The linkage between cognitive diversity and team innovation: Exploring the roles of team humor styles and team emotional intelligence via the conservation of resources theory

Researchers have displayed considerable interest in how and when team cognitive diversity leads to improved or impaired team innovation. When addressing this issue, scholars have adopted the information/decision making and social categorization theoretical perspectives. In contrast, we draw on conservation of resources (COR) theory when examining the cognitive diversity and team innovation relationship. We argue that in a team environment, cognitive diversity may result in the threat of losing valuable resources. This threat, in turn, encourages team members to engage in resource replenishment through the use of different humor styles (i.e., affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive, self-defeating). We argue that, with such resource replenishment, four team-level humor styles emerge and mediate the relationship between cognitive diversity and team innovation. In addition, we expect team emotional intelligence to moderate the relationships between cognitive diversity and team humor styles. Our model has important theoretical implications for team diversity, humor, emotional intelligence, and innovation research.

Plain language summary

Team cognitive diversity can be defined as the extent to which team members differ in their ideas, perspectives, or values. Cognitive diversity is important for teams to cultivate innovation although it may also result in relationship conflicts and the formation of subgroups in a team. Our paper views cognitive diversity as a signal that drives team members to use humor to cope with diversity. This may then result in different humor styles (i.e., affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive, self-defeating) that characterize the way the team uses humor. For instance, while working in a cognitively diverse team, team members might make a joke about work that the whole team laughs together (i.e., affiliative humor). However, some members might use sarcasm to insult others who are different from the group norms (i.e., aggressive humor). We argue that the team humor styles will influence team innovation, which in turn will link cognitive diversity with team innovation. Moreover, we suggest that team emotional intelligence will influence the extent to which the four team humor styles link cognitive diversity and team innovation.

The Relationship Between Leadership Safety Commitment and Resilience Safety Participation Behavior

Purpose

To analyze the impact of leadership safety commitment on miners’ safety participation behavior and to explore the mediating effect of miners’ psychological safety and the moderating effect of perceived supervisor safety attitude (PSSA) and perceived coworker safety attitude (PCSA).

Methods

A total of 1446 valid questionnaires were collected from miners working in state-owned mines in China from August to October 2019. A variety of scales were used to measure the variables, including “Our management has strict requirements for safe work when working backward”, “I made mistakes in the team, and other coworkers often have opinions about me”, “I will be regarded as a troublemaker if I raise safety issues”, “When we complete work safely, the supervisor is satisfied”, “My coworkers sometimes ignore safety rules”.

Results

Leadership safety commitment has a significant positive effect on miners’ safety participation behavior; psychological safety of miners partially mediates the relationship between leadership safety commitment and the safety participation behavior of miners; and PSSA and PCSA moderate the intermediary effect of miners’ psychological safety on leadership safety commitment and miners’ safety participation behavior. When PSSA or PCSA is positive, the mediating effect of psychological safety is stronger.

Conclusion

This paper analyzes miners’ safety participation behavior from the perspective of resilience and discusses the impact of leadership safety commitment on miners’ safety participation behavior. These offer theoretical guidance and inspiration for the management of organizations to enhance the positive effects of workplace leadership safety commitment and improve miners’ safety participation behavior.