Organizational humor as making our work more meaningful: mediation by crafting job resources

Abstract

In the present study, we examined the impact of humor’s positive functions on the perception of a job’s meaningfulness. We argued that liberating and stress-relieving humor act as job resources enhancing job crafting to increase social and structural resources to experience meaningfulness. We hypothesized that crafting the job to increase structural and social resources would mediate the link between organizational humor functions (i.e., liberating and stress-relieving) and meaningfulness. We conducted a cross-sectional study among 200 Turkish employees from different occupations. Our results revealed that increasing structural resources mediated the relationship between liberating humor and meaningfulness, while this mediation was partially for stress-relieving humor. The mediating role of increasing social resources was partial and conditional for both types of organizational humor functions. The practical and theoretical implications have been discussed from a positive organizational scholarship perspective.

What science says about entrepreneurs' well-being: a conceptual structure review

“…Undoubtedly, entrepreneurship is a challenging effort that involves significant contradictions for an entrepreneur, affecting their well-being. For some entrepreneurs, effective decision-making in their actions can lead to success (Nikolaev et al, 2020;De Winnaar and Scholtz, 2020;Turnalar-Çetinkaya et al, 2022;M€ uller et al, 2023), while for others, especially in an environment characterized by uncertainty, it may not (Caliendo et al, 2022;Nguyen and Thi Thu Le, 2024). Uncertainty is subjective in the sense that different individuals may have varying levels of doubts in identical situations (Lipshitz and Strauss, 1997).…”

“…In this regard, it is not surprising that in recent years, there has been a growing trend in academia that promotes multidisciplinary work with the goal of connecting well-being with the business domain, both conceptually and empirically (Wiklund et al, 2017(Wiklund et al, , 2019Stephan, 2018;Shir et al, 2019;Pathak, 2020;Turnalar-Çetinkaya et al, 2022;Tay et al, 2023;Ambhore and Ofori, 2023;Chaudhry et al, 2024). From various definitions (see among others: Knight, 1964;Bird, 1988;Lumpkin and Dess, 1996;Shane and Venkataraman, 2000;McMullen and Shepherd, 2006;Uy et al, 2013;Daspit et al, 2023), it can be deduced that entrepreneurship involves taking risks, making decisions, seizing opportunities and acting creatively, proactively and innovatively in uncertain environments to achieve individual entrepreneurial goals.…”

A network analysis of relationships between the work as meaning inventory (WAMI-U) and the humor styles in university students: Enhancing prevention in decent education

“…A seminal study of the adaptive value of humor in facilitating meaning at work (Tracy et al, 2006) underlined that employees could rely on humor to cope with problematic work situations, using humor to clarify incongruences or absurdities and convert it to be meaningful. Recently scholars have started to more fully explore the relationships between meaningful work and humor (Bakker et al 2020; Bartzik et al, 2021; Turnalar-Çetinkaya et al, 2022). Researchers have advanced the idea that humor could positively affect employees’ activities and tasks, leading them to be more intrinsically motivated (Bakker et al, 2020).…”

“…Empirical findings showed that among nurses who completed humor training, sense of humor mediates the relationship between humor intervention and perceived meaningfulness at work (Bartzik et al, 2021). Another employee study showed that the relationship between liberating humor (creating new perspectives and alternative social meanings that may convey new understandings) and meaningfulness at work was mediated by job crafting (increasing structural and social resources) (Turnalar-Çetinkaya et al, 2022). These results illustrate how humor has gained attention as a focus of research and intervention for its promise as a construct that can be taught to both enhance coping resources (Martin & Lefcourt, 1983; Martin et al, 2003) and promote well-being in the workplace (Guenter et al, 2013; Kim & Plester, 2019).…”