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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引用次数: 0

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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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.