Humor of the Leader: A Source of Creativity of Employees Through Psychological Empowerment or Unethical Behavior Through Perceived Power? The Role of Self-Deprecating Behavior.

Hassan Ali,Amir Ikram,Asif Mahmood,Ayyaz Ahmad

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.635300

Abstract

Although we use humor in our daily communication, there still needs to cognize its effects on the attitudes and behavior of the employees. Based on benign violation theory (BVT), the study proposes that leader's humor (LH) conveys social information about counter norms. The BVT has been amalgamated with social information processing theory (SIPT) to develop hypotheses assuming the consequences of LH on the attitude and behavior of the employees. This study hypothesizes that even though LH is linked positively with employee creativity via leader-member exchange and psychological empowerment in sequence (blessing path), it may also send information to the employees about the acceptability of norm violation. This perception ultimately leads to power perception and, causes unethical behavior in the series (curse path). Moreover, this study also postulates that leader's self-deprecating humor (LSDH) moderates these indirect effects by enhancing the blessing and reducing the curse, which emerged from LH. Quantitative data of 630 software engineers from software houses based in Pakistan provided support to test the hypotheses. The results demonstrate that LH is a double-edge sword that enhances blessing (creativity) as well as curse (employee unethical behavior), whereas LSDH augments the blessing and throttles back the curse. Theoretical and managerial implications have also been discussed.

Highlights

We use humor in daily communication; the critical aspects of humor play an important role in determining how we form beliefs about others (Bitterly and Schweitzer, 2019)
With the integration of social information processing theory (SIPT) and benign violation theory (BVT), we argue that leader humor (LH) gives signals to employees that norm violation is acceptable in their organization
Our study reveals that LH significantly impacts unethical behavior (UB) when leader’s self-deprecating humor (LSDH) is not considered

Summary

Introduction

We use humor in daily communication; the critical aspects of humor play an important role in determining how we form beliefs about others (Bitterly and Schweitzer, 2019). Humor is a broader concept defined as the ability of an individual to amuse others (Martin et al, 2003) Due to this amusement at the workplace, employees have the freedom in shaping their behavior. Leader humor (LH) predicts work engagement and follower deviance (Yam et al, 2018), the intent of the employee to stay, job performance (Kong et al, 2019), employee advocacy (Karakowsky et al, 2020) It is associated with job performance, organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), job satisfaction, affective organizational commitment, intent to stay, and positive emotions via leader–member exchange (LME or LMX) relationship (Kong et al, 2019). This is the first study for considering these neglected mechanisms

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Discussion

Conclusion