The double-edged sword effect of leader humor on employee thriving at work

IF 4.9 2区心理学 Q1 PSYCHOLOGY, APPLIED Applied Psychology-An International Review-Psychologie Appliquee-Revue Internationale Pub Date : 2024-12-20 DOI:10.1111/apps.12593

Angela J. Xu, Lei Wang, Fufu Sun

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Abstract

Despite the importance of leader humor in sustaining organizational effectiveness, little is known about how and when leader humor affects employee thriving, an important indicator of employee personal growth and organizational sustainable human capital. Drawing on and extending the socially embedded model of thriving at work, this study takes a balanced view and investigates the positive and negative impacts of leader humor on employee thriving. On the one hand, we propose that leader humor is related to information inadequacy, which hinders employee thriving. On the other hand, we argue that leader humor enables employees' positive affect, which enhances their level of thriving. Three-wave data collected from 268 employees working in various industries support our hypotheses. The findings show that high-quality information and affect resources exchange relationships with teammates (i.e., team–member exchange) alleviate the detrimental effect of leader humor on information adequacy but do not affect its beneficial effect on positive affect, which facilitates employee thriving as a whole. This study has practical implications on how practitioners can capitalize on leader humor and build a thriving workforce.

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尽管领导者的幽默在保持组织有效性方面非常重要，但人们对领导者的幽默如何以及何时影响员工的茁壮成长却知之甚少，而员工的茁壮成长是员工个人成长和组织可持续人力资本的重要指标。本研究借鉴并扩展了 "工作中茁壮成长的社会嵌入模型"，以一种平衡的视角研究了领导幽默对员工茁壮成长的积极和消极影响。一方面，我们认为领导幽默与信息不足有关，而信息不足会阻碍员工的茁壮成长。另一方面，我们认为领导者的幽默能够促进员工的积极情绪，从而提高他们的茁壮成长水平。从 268 名不同行业的员工那里收集到的三波数据支持了我们的假设。研究结果表明，与队友之间高质量的信息和情感资源交换关系（即团队成员交换关系）减轻了领导者幽默对信息充分性的不利影响，但并不影响其对积极情感的有利影响，而积极情感从整体上促进了员工的茁壮成长。这项研究对于实践者如何利用领导者的幽默来打造一支蓬勃发展的员工队伍具有现实意义。

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来源期刊

Applied Psychology-An International Review-Psychologie Appliquee-Revue Internationale PSYCHOLOGY, APPLIED-

CiteScore

13.70

自引率

5.60%

发文量

期刊介绍： "Applied Psychology: An International Review" is the esteemed official journal of the International Association of Applied Psychology (IAAP), a venerable organization established in 1920 that unites scholars and practitioners in the field of applied psychology. This peer-reviewed journal serves as a global platform for the scholarly exchange of research findings within the diverse domain of applied psychology. The journal embraces a wide array of topics within applied psychology, including organizational, cross-cultural, educational, health, counseling, environmental, traffic, and sport psychology. It particularly encourages submissions that enhance the understanding of psychological processes in various applied settings and studies that explore the impact of different national and cultural contexts on psychological phenomena.