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

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.

Understanding the Link Between Work-Related and Non-Work-Related Supervisor–Subordinate Relationships and Affective Commitment: The Mediating and Moderating Roles of Psychological Safety

“…48,50 SIP model believes that social environment contains important information clues, and employees will shape their own attitudes and behaviors through these information clues. 52 Based on SIP model, both work-related LMX and non-workrelated SSG can be used as important information/resources for employees. 38,40 However, work-related LMX and nonwork-related SSG will affect employees' attitude (AC) in different ways.…”

As above, so below? The influence of leader humor on bootleg innovation: The mechanism of psychological empowerment and affective trust in leaders

“…Many researches have focused on the key mediating role that psychological empowerment plays a role between leadership style and employee attitudes, emotions, and behaviors (Chen et al, 2019;Jing and Zhou, 2019;Rosenberg et al, 2021). Existing research has confirmed that leader humor is a successful empowerment management practice that effectively stimulates employees' perceptions of empowerment, influencing their work attitudes and behaviors (Gkorezis et al, 2011;Ali et al, 2021).…”

“…Thus, as an empowerment management strategy, leader humor can remove the interpersonal obstacles associated with formal hierarchies in the workplace and increase the sense of empowerment of subordinates (Gkorezis et al, 2011;Jia and Liu, 2021). When leaders and employees communicate with humor, this case not only makes the work more meaningful (Duncan, 1982) but also enhances employees' work autonomy, self-efficacy and self-confidence (Jiang et al, 2020;Ali et al, 2021), thereby improving employees' perception of impact on the job. The sense of work meaning, selfefficacy, self-determination, and work impact experienced by subordinates is exactly the four sub-dimensions of psychological empowerment.…”

“…As a form of empowerment management, leader humor can effectively arouse employees' psychological empowerment perceptions (Ali et al, 2021). In addition, high perception, in turn, positively influences employees' prosocial violations (Yan et al, 2017).…”

“…Leader humor is regarded as an empowerment management strategy that initiates the empowerment cognition of subordinate employees (Gkorezis et al, 2011;Wang and Yang, 2019;Ali et al, 2021). The benign violation theory (BVT) is often used to explain two conditions for humor.…”