Friend or fiend? Disentangling upward humor's (De)stabilizing effects on hierarchies
Abstract
Humor research in organizations focuses on leaders’ humor, but we know far less about followers’ humor. Here, we review and synthesize the scattered work on this “upward humor,” offering a novel framing of it as a strategy for followers to deal with hierarchies. We propose a continuum of upward humor from stabilizing (i.e., a friend who uses upward humor to reinforce hierarchies, make hierarchies more bearable or stable) to destabilizing (i.e., a fiend who uses upward humor to question or reshape existing hierarchies) depending on perceived intent (i.e., from benevolent to malicious, respectively) and outline key factors that shape these interpretations. We close with novel questions and methods for future research such as power plays, multi-modal data, and human-robot interactions. Show more
Permanent link
https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000628470Publication status
publishedExternal links
Journal / series
Current Opinion in PsychologyVolume
Pages / Article No.
Publisher
ElsevierSubject
Follower humor; Followership; Behavioral humor; Ambivalence; Power; StatusOrganisational unit
09562 - Schmid, Petra (ehemalig) / Schmid, Petra (former)
More
Show all metadata