The Effects of Supervisor Humor on Employee Creativity: The Role of Intrinsic Motivation and Team Human Capital

Abstract

While humor has received much attention in the field of psychology, recently management scholars have begun to examine the effects of humor on individual and organizational effectiveness. Recent research supports the use of humor as an effective strategy to manage the work environment, and high profile case studies involving companies such as Southwest Airlines, Ben & Jerry’s, and Sun Microsystems demonstrate the potential of humor as a significant management tool. Specifically, employing humor at work has been associated with high job performance, effective leadership and communication, positive employee psychological well-being, improved organizational commitment, and increased employee creativity.

Although current studies have enhanced our understanding about the relationship between humor and individual and organizational effectiveness, researchers have yet to address several important issues. First, most studies to date have considered humor as a single dimension in their analysis, yet humor is widely acknowledged to be a multi-dimensional construct. Second, research has not yet explained the underlying mechanism and effects of supervisor humor specifically on employee creativity. Third, scholars have yet to research the use of humor as a positive management strategy in shaping attitudes and behaviors, as most current studies focus on humor with respect to individuals and stress management. Finally, there is scant research examining the situational variables other than demographics that can moderate the relationship between humor and individual and organizational effectiveness.

To addresses these issues, we examined how various types of supervisor humor affect subordinates' individual creativity, how subordinates' intrinsic motivation mediates the latter relationships, and how team human capital moderates the relationship between supervisor humor and subordinates' individual creativity. Additionally, we analyzed the indirect effects of intrinsic motivation on the relationship between supervisor humor and subordinates' individual creativity.

We analyzed the telecommunications industry, where research and development (R&D) can play an important role for organizational success, and where individual creativity is encouraged. Five hundred surveys were distributed, one hundred to each company. Our sample focused on employees and their supervisors in the R&D departments. Before we distributed the surveys, we explained the purpose of the survey briefly and received assistance from either human resource managers or the supervisors in the team. To resolve the common method variance program, we asked both subordinates and supervisors to participate in the survey. Subordinates assessed the types of humor of their supervisors, their own intrinsic motivation, and team human capital, whereas supervisors assessed their subordinates' individual creativity.

Since one supervisor assessed several subordinates, we used Hierarchical Linear Modeling to examine the research hypotheses. Furthermore, we used 3-level analysis to control the company effect on the results that examined the role of humor on strategic management across organizations. That is, we used supervisor humor, intrinsic motivation, and individual creativity as Level-1 variables, team human capital as a Level-2 variable, and included company as a constant at Level-3.

The results show that supervisors' self-enhancing humor was positively associated with subordinates' individual creativity, and subordinates' intrinsic motivation significantly mediates the latter relationship. In addition, team human capital significantly moderated the relationship between subordinates' intrinsic motivation and individual creativity, and team human capital significantly moderated the indirect effects of subordinates' intrinsic motivation on the relationship between supervisors' self-enhancing humor and subordinates' individual creativity. Specifically, the effects of subordinates' intrinsic motivation on individual creativity became stronger as team human capital increased. In addition, subordinates' intrinsic motivation indirectly affected the relationship between supervisors' self-enhancing humor and subordinates' individual creativity more strongly when participants rated team human capital as high rather than low.

Our study provides some theoretical and practical implications. It extends current humor research theoretically and empirically (e.g., Avolio et al., 1999; Decker & Rotondo, 2001; Gkorezis et al., 2011) by theorizing about the association between supervisors' humor and subordinates' creativity, and by demonstrating that supervisors' self-enhancing humor in particular is positively associated with subordinates' creativity. Furthermore we theorized and tested the mediating effects of individual intrinsic motivation on the relationship between supervisors' humor and subordinates' creativity. Our study fills gaps in current humor research by investigating the underlying mechanisms of how supervisors' humor affects subordinates' work attitudes and behaviors. As described previously, individual intrinsic motivation strongly mediates the effect of supervisors' humor on subordinates' creativity. This finding reminds us that it is important to examine the underlying mechanism when we do research on the relationship between supervisors' humor and subordinates' attitudes and behaviors. Our study also extends current creativity research that has focused on the linear effects of supervisors' humor on subordinate outcomes by examining the moderating effects of team human capital on the relationship between supervisors' humor and subordinates' creativity. Our findings suggest that to enhance employee creativity managers need to develop their own sense of humor and use it effectively in addition to improving team members' human capital. Our study suggests that Korean companies can employ humor as a management and leadership strategy just as Southwest Airlines, Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream, and Sun Microsystems have, despite the difference in social norms and cultural influences between East and West.

Keywords: humor, style of humor, individual creativity, intrinsic motivation, team human capital