Impact of leader aggressive humor on employee extra-role behaviors: opposite moderating effects of team identification and professional identification

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship of leader aggressive humor on employee extra-role behaviors of proactivity and creativity by probing feeling ostracized as a mediator and team identification and professional identification as boundary conditions.Design/methodology/approachA survey sample of 347 employees was collected from three technology companies in Sichuan and Guizhou, China. Hierarchical regression analysis and PROCESS macro in SPSS were used to test the hypotheses.FindingsThe results indicate that leader aggressive humor is negatively related to employee extra-role behaviors. Feeling ostracized is an important mechanism linking leader aggressive humor and employee extra-role behaviors and team identification and professional identification moderate the relationship.Practical implicationsOrganizations should make rules to prevent leaders from using aggressive humorous behaviors and encourage coworkers to show more affiliative funny behaviors during breaks to reduce employees' sense of ostracism.Originality/valueBuilding on sociometer theory, this research demonstrates the opposite moderating effects of team identification and professional identification in the effects of leader aggressive humor on feeling ostracized and consequently employee extra-role behaviors.