Humorous leadership, upward voice and resistance to change in the hotel context: from affective events theory perspective

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the effect of affiliative-based humorous leadership on hotel employee outcomes (i.e. resistance to change and upward voice), underpinned by affective events theory. Further, this paper investigates psychological capital as a mediation effect and emotional intelligence as a moderation effect. Design/methodology/approach Using a structured questionnaire, 554 supervisors of 20 four- and five-star hotels in Sharm El-Sheikh responded based on a time-lagged approach. A Smart-partial least squares (Smart-PLS) v. 3.3.9 was used to analyze the data set. Findings The findings revealed that affiliative-based humorous leadership has a positive effect on psychological capital, and psychological capital has a positive association with employee upward voice. Psychological capital partially mediated the linkage of humorous leadership with employees' upward voices and resistance to change. According to the results, emotional intelligence strengthened the linkage of psychological capital with employee resistance to change and upward voice. Research limitations/implications The findings contribute to the body of knowledge on humor and the development of new ideas in the hospitality literature. This paper adds to the hospitality literature on humorous leadership in developing countries, specifically in Egypt. This paper also provides practitioners with new perspectives as they develop strategies and use humor-related wise leadership styles in the workplace. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is one of the first studies to assess affiliative-based humor in leadership in the hospitality industry. This paper contributes to future studies on the crucial effect of workplace engagement and its association with employees’ novel and intriguing actions and offers a good guideline for organizations and enterprises wishing to better leverage leader humor.