I suppose you think that's funny! The role of humour in corporate learning events

Abstract

This paper examines the uses of humour among participants in ve bank training programmes in the UK. These programmes, run by the banks themselves, were studied using ethnographic methods and the observations reported here are based upon extensive eld notes. The paper examines the ways in which participants deployed humour during these learning events and the role humour played in the management of their relations with their fellow learners and the course instructors. The course instructors' use of humour is also examined. It is argued that humour played a far from trivial role in the programmes studied. On the contrary, humour was vital to their maintenance as viable organizational practices. In conclusion it is suggested that the more systematic study of humour could make an important contribution to the understanding of the social realities of corporate training programmes.

Developing the humour repertoire concept to guide future tourism-humour research

“…The viability of humour as a stress reduction tool, as an emotionally uplifting experience, and a viable business tactic have all been asserted in previous studies (Chan 2010;Martin 2007;Thomas & Al-Maskati 2001). In the context of tourism, the many novel situations in which tourists find themselves can be a rich resource for both appreciating and producing humour.…”

A requirement and challenge of joke-ability in humor researcher

“…It appears that rather than being a coherent body of literature on humor in education, it is not systematic enough and the naturalistic descriptive and experimental studies are rare in this field (Banas et al, 2011). The existing qualitative studies into humor in education concern among others: gender of pupils and teachers (Hutchings et al, 2007;Kehily and Nayak, 1997;Thomas and Al-Maskati, 1997); novice teachers' dilemmas (Goodson and Walker, 1991;Bondy et al, 2007); teaching methods (Ulloth, 2002;Vogel, 1995); classroom management (Martin, 2003;Monroe and Obidah, 2004); teacher's personal qualities (Davies, 1990;Horng et al, 2005;Hutchings et al, 2007;Kher et al, 1999) teachers' well-being and workplace culture (Bullough, 2012;Mawhinney, 2008b;Miller, 2008;Woods, 1979;Richards, 1996); and the benefits of using humor at school (Bullough, 2012;Dudzikowa, 1996).…”

Soldiering on: Exploring the role of humour as a disciplinary technology in the military

“…The reason being, of course, that discourses are not contained within specific texts, but that texts exist within discourse: they are one more element in wider 'systems of dispersion' (Brownlie and Saren, 2005). As discussed above, also important in the analysis was consideration of the wider (temporal, special, organizational) context in which the texts were located, for, as Thomas and Al-Maskati (1997) have previously argued, humour can take many forms and serve a multitude of functions; however, it is only when explored in a specific context that its meaning and relevance become apparent. Of course, in the final analysis, looking for humour will always be a deeply subjective task reflecting the researcher's own position within the discourse.…”

“…As valuable as this research has been, it has been somewhat limited to a relatively narrow range of workplace environments: primarily commercial organizational settings, such as the factory (Collinson, 1988(Collinson, , 2002Linstead, 1985) and the office space (Taylor and Bain, 2003), through practices such as meetings (Kangasharju and Nikko, 2009), training events (Grugulis, 2002;Thomas and Al-Maskati, 1997) and workplace cultural change initiatives (Holmes and Marra, 2002). Relatively under-explored has been the study of workplace humour in non-commercial sectors.…”