The Impact of Humor on Work Efficiency at Workplace: An Empirical Examination in Tourism and Hospitality Sector in The United Arab Emirates

Abstract

Despite the ubiquitous observance of humor at workplace, there is paucity of scholarly attention in terms of the manner in which it affects the behaviour of employees. This study aims to explore the relationship between sense of humor and work efficiency by utilizing the benign violation theory (BVT) to posit that elaborative social information is attributed to in the humor of superiors across organizations. Additionally, the social information processing (SIP) theory was applied for forming the hypotheses. Despite the fact that superiors’ humor is suggested to have a positive correlation with superior-subordinate interchange and as a consequence, work efficiency, it could also point at the norm violation’s tolerability in a workplace environment. These insights, in turn, have a positive correlation with the deviance of subordinates. Furthermore, these indirect impacts are suggested to have been mediated by the violent humor of superiors. Data was sourced from three-wave field that were conducted in United Arab Emirates (UAE). The findings suggest that the humor can evince unexpected negative behavioral patterns.