Understanding the Role of Psychological Capital in Humorous Leadership-Employee Creativity Relations

Abstract

This paper aims to examine how humorous leadership enhances employee workplace creativity from a novel angle of employee psychological capital (EPC). This study also explores the moderating roles of supervisor-subordinate dyadic tenure and work autonomy in the proposed model. Data from a sample of 355 supervisor-subordinate dyads working in an information technology enterprise in the People’s Republic of China was used to test the assumed moderated mediation model. The results indicate the positive relationship between humorous leadership and employee workplace creativity, which is partially mediated by EPC. Moreover, work autonomy significantly moderates the relationship between EPC and employee creativity. Humorous leadership has a significant effect on the extra role behavior of subordinates, leading to workplace creativity. The deliberate establishment of a humorous image by leaders may encourage subordinates to achieve creative goals. Combined with traditional management practices that emphasize the supportive behaviors of leaders, leaders can use humor to provide an open and friendly atmosphere for employees, thereby encouraging creativity in the workplace. Organizations should also place greater emphasis on employee work autonomy, giving employees enough flexibility on when and how they deal with their work; this could enhance the positive impact of other factors on employee workplace creativity. These findings carry implications for research on humorous leadership, EPC, and creativity.

Linking Leader Humor to Employee Innovative Behavior: The Roles of Work Engagement and Supervisor’s Organizational Embodiment

“…In particular, the existing researches on leader humor are mainly conducted in the West context (Ho et al, 2011;Pundt, 2015), while the relevant studies in the Chinese context are still basically in blank (Li et al, 2019). Based on the samples of Chinese employees and their direct supervisors, this study reveals that leader humor can promote employee innovative behavior.…”

“…Leader humor is a hot topic in the field of leadership research ( Cooper et al, 2018 ; Li et al, 2019 ), and its influence on employee innovative behavior has been attracting wide attention from various scholars and enterprises ( Pundt, 2015 ; Goswami et al, 2016 ; Karakowsky et al, 2020 ). After reviews of literatures on humor and innovation, this study offers theoretical and empirical accounts for whether and how leader humor affects employee innovative behavior by assuming work engagement as a mediator and supervisor’s organizational embodiment as a moderator.…”

“…Employee's perception of leader humor was measured with a 3-item scale developed by Cooper (2008). This scale had been verified in the Chinese context (Li et al, 2019). At Time 1, all employees were asked to rate statements based on their actual perception of humor from their direct supervisors.…”

Moderating Effect of Family Support on the Mediated Relation Between Negative Life Events and Antisocial Behavior Tendencies via Self-Esteem Among Chinese Adolescents

“…In the preliminary analysis phase, the reliability and validity of the scales were determined using Cronbach’s alpha, composite reliability, and average variance extracted after CFA, which was conducted in Mplus 7.4. Cronbach’s alpha was greater than 0.90, indicating good reliability ( Li et al, 2019 ). Composite reliability was greater than 0.60, and average variance extracted was greater than 0.50, indicating that each measurement construct had great convergence validity, where an acceptable average variance extracted can be between 0.36 and 0.50 ( Fornell and Larcker, 1981 ).…”

The Influence of Managerial Psychology on Job Satisfaction among Healthcare Employees in Ghana

“…Based on a study of 403 bank employees in Bangkok, Narumol et al [23], found out that positive psychological capital and job autonomy interact to generate intrinsic work motivation that stimulates higher employee performance. A more recent study by Li et al [24] complements the intricate relationship between psychological capital, job autonomy and other positive work outcomes. The study noted that psychological capital partially mediates the relationship between humorous leadership and employee workplace creativity.…”