Emotional culture and humor in organizations: A social-functional approach

Adopting a social-functionalist theoretical lens, this review examines emotional culture and its relation to discrete emotions such as joviality and humor-supportive or joking organizational cultures. We propose four primary pathways through which humor influences emotional culture in organizations and social units: (1) creating and defining emotional culture through bottom-up affective mechanisms, (2) a top-down normative function that promotes or inhibits humor through cultural values, norms, and traditions of organizational life, (3) a maintenance function, whereby humor corrects emotional culture norm violations, and (4) a link to positive work outcomes via a reciprocal feedback loop. We also describe negative consequences of humor for emotional culture, highlight unanswered questions in the literature, and suggest future research opportunities, including a comprehensive new framework.

Automated summary

This review adopts a social-functionalist theoretical lens to examine the influence of humor on emotional culture in organizations and social units. It proposes four primary pathways through which humor influences emotional culture and explores the negative consequences of humor. The review also highlights unanswered questions in the literature and suggests future research opportunities.