Managing with Humor: A Novel Approach to Building Positive Employee Emotions and Psychological Resources

This book focuses on an emerging area of study in management: managerial humor and its impact on employees' outcomes. Drawing from theoretical work that advocates humor as a managerial tool and building on existing theory and documented evidence on humor, the book explores how managers can use humor to positively affect employees’ short-term emotional states and long-term psychological resources at work, and thus reduce the likelihood of their leaving the organization. First, the book develops a theoretical framework for humor events at work and provides evidence-based findings on employees’ humor behavior within actual work contexts. Second, it explores how humor can be used to positively impact employees’ emotional states at work. In doing so, the book takes a multidisciplinary approach to humor by integrating theory and findings from the emotions literature, Positive Organizational Behavior, and Broaden and Build Theory into the humor literature. The book sheds new light on the consequences of managers’ use of humor for employees. It provides practical guidelines on how managers can use humor as an effective tool at work to bring about desired employee outcomes.