WORKPLACE HUMOR: ANTECEDENTS AND CONSQUENCES

Abstract

Purpose-In the last three years, individuals have been faced with many challenging events that will make them feel negative. Pandemics, economic crises and wars affect the daily lives of individuals as well as their business lives. In addition, employees state that they work under high pressure and often feel unhappy. Studies show that positive emotions and situations have positive outcomes such as employee performance and organizational citizenship behavior. In this context, employees need factors that will increase their positive emotions and situations. Although humor is an unusual concept for workplaces that are considered serious by nature, it has recently attracted the attention of both managers and academics. The purpose of this research is to examine the antecedents and consequences of humor in the workplace. Methodology- In this study, quantitative and qualitative methods will be used together. First, a qualitative research will be conducted and employees will be asked what they understand from humor in the workplace. Then, content analysis will be made and common themes will be revealed. In the second stage, a survey will be conducted with the existing scales in the literature. Findings- In the research, firstly, white-collar and 5 years of work experience were asked to define the concept of humor in the workplace, then they were asked what their suggestions were to improve humor, and finally, they were asked what positive outcomes they had on the days when they felt the sense of humor. Conclusion- As a result of this study, humor in the workplace in Turkey has been examined. After the qualitative part of the research, study two, which is the quantitative part, will be started. After the concept of humor is defined by Turkish employees, the proposed research model will be tested in the light of organizational behaviour and management literature. In the research model, playful work design is suggested as the premise of the sense of humor, and creativity and knowledge sharing as its output. Questionnaire method will be used to test the research model. The research model will be tested using structural equation modeling. Keywords: Humor,organizational culture, knowledge sharing, creativity, playfulness, work design. JEL Codes: M12, M1O, M14