Making Humour Work: Creativity on the Job

Abstract

There is a long research tradition associating humour with creativity, although relatively little research which focuses on the use of humour among professionals in particular workplaces. Addressing this gap, this paper analyses ordinary everyday workplace interaction in a range of New Zealand white collar organizations in order to examine claims about the beneficial effects of workplace humour, including claims that humour is associated with creativity at work. The analysis provides evidence that humour not only contributes to the construction of effective workplace relationships (the creative use of relational humour), but may also stimulate intellectual activity of direct relevance to the achievement of workplace objectives (the use of humour to foster workplace creativity). The analysis suggests that the first category is pervasive and examples abound throughout our data set, whilst humour associated with workplace creativity is less frequent and tends to characterize some communities of practice more than others. Interestingly, the effective use of workplace humour to generate new ideas and stimulate intellectual progress is strongly associated with what has been labelled ‘transformational’ leadership.

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