Gender Differences and Perceived Efficacy of Humor Styles in the Workplace

Humor as a tool in the management toolkit has been underutilized and not well understood. Yet, humor has been found to result in many positive employee and organizational outcomes such as lowered stress and higher productivity. Further, it is asserted to be selectively and effectively applied by managers with the right knowledge of humor to enhance their relationships with subordinates. This paper specifically postulates how several types of humor can affect subordinate attributions of managerial competence and satisfaction with supervision. The proposed relationships are hypothesized to be moderated by gender.