Barbara Plester

Crossing the line: boundaries of workplace humour and fun

Purpose – This paper aims to present exploratory, empirical data from an ethnographic study into workplace humour and fun. It explores the notion that workplace humour and fun are influenced by the creation of boundaries that either enable or constrain activities.Design/methodology/approach – Qualitative data were gathered from four New Zealand companies within different industries. Mixed methods were used and included semi‐structured interviews, participant observation and document collection.Findings – The findings suggest that organisational culture is influential in boundary creation. In three formal companies, boundaries for humour and fun activities were narrower, and this constrained humour activities. In an informal company, wider boundaries resulted in humour activities that were unrestrained which created an unusual and idiosyncratic company identity.Research limitations/implications – It would be useful to replicate this exploratory research in different workplace sectors and environments.Origi...

The fun paradox

Purpose – Fun means different things to different people and the purpose of this paper is to attempt to answer the question “what is fun at work?”. Given that perceptions of fun differ among people, the answer is that a pluralistic concept of fun best captures different notions of what constitutes fun at work. Design/methodology/approach – The research combines two separate studies. The first is an in-depth ethnographic project involving interviews, participant observations and document collection investigating fun and humour in four different New Zealand companies. The second study extends findings from the first by specifically asking participants to reply to survey questions asking “what is fun at work?”. Findings – Currently fun is described in a variety of ways by researchers using different descriptors for similar concepts. Combining current conceptions of fun with the own research the authors categorize the complex notion of workplace fun into three clear categories: organic, managed and task fun. ...

Fun times: the relationship between fun and workplace engagement

Purpose – The idea of workplace fun seems positive, straightforward and simple but emerging research suggests a surprising complexity and ambiguity to this concept. Drawing on recent literature and empirical data, the purpose of this paper is to use three different forms of workplace fun: managed, organic and task fun to examine the relationship between fun and workplace engagement. Design/methodology/approach – Using an ethnographic approach, the qualitative data originated from four different New Zealand organizations, within different industries. Organizations included a law firm, a financial institution, an information technology company and a utility services provider. Data for this study were collected from semi-structured interviews with a range of participants in each company. In total 59 interviews were conducted with approximately 15 originating from each of the four organizations. One full-time month was spent within each company experiencing the everyday life and behaviours at all levels of each organization. The specific focus of the research is organizational culture and humour and during analysis findings emerged that linked to engagement, fun, disengagement and the concept of flow. Findings – This paper offers exploratory findings that suggest some specific connections between the concepts of fun and engagement. Empirical connections between these concepts are not currently apparent in either engagement or fun research, yet the data suggest some firm associations between them. The exploratory findings suggest that some forms of workplace fun offer individual employees a refreshing break which creates positive affect. Participants perceive that such affect results in greater workplace and task engagement. Additionally the data show that some people experience their work tasks as a form of fun and the authors link this to a specific form of engagement known as “flow” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975; Moneta, 2010). The authors suggest an organizational-level effect, where workplace fun creates enjoyment which stimulates greater overall engagement with the team, unit or organization itself. Conversely the data also suggest that for some people managed or organic fun (see Plester et al., 2015) creates distraction, disharmony or dissonance that disrupts their flow and can foster disengagement. Practical implications – The ambiguity and complexity in the relationship between these concepts is an emerging topic for research that offers a variety of implications for scholars and practitioners of HRM and organizational behaviour. The authors contend that workplace fun potentially offers practitioners opportunities for fostering a climate of high engagement which may include most employees and thus create additional workplace benefits. Additionally through highlighting employee reactions to different types of fun we suggest ways of avoiding employee disengagement, disharmony and cynicism and the associated negative effects. Originality/value – The concept of fun is not empirically linked with current engagement research and the authors assert that workplace fun is an important driver of employee engagement. The authors identity engagement at the individual task level and further extend engagement research by emphasizing that fun has the potential to create engagement at the team, unit or organizational level. These differing levels of engagement have not thus far been differentiated in the extant literature.

Healthy humour: Using humour to cope at work

Abstract Humour offers relief from boredom in the workplace and is an important facet of working life. Sharing humour at work can build relationships, create positive affect, and improve camaraderie between colleagues. Workplace humour is an under‐researched topic and there is little empirical research that has explored humour in real workplace settings. This paper presents new qualitative empirical data from a 3 year study investigating the influence of humour within organisational culture. Analyses are drawn from observations that recorded verbatim humour exchanges as well as from interviews with managers and subordinates from four New Zealand companies. The paper explores the idea that enacting and enjoying humour at work may contribute to workplace well‐being. Using humour at work may constitute a positive coping strategy that helps people to manage stress and strain experienced at work. Data suggest that humour is used specifically to offer relief from tension, to help deal with adversity and difficult situations, and to soften directives and requests made to colleagues and subordinates.

Ingesting the organization: The embodiment of organizational food rituals

This exploratory paper asks: ‘how do organizational food and drink rituals shape, reflect or create organizational culture?’ Adopting an embodied approach based on Merleau-Pontys [1945. Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by C. Smith, 2003. London: Penguin. New York: Routledge] phenomenological work, this paper explores the significance of food-based rituals. Data were collected from different organizations using mixed methods and an embodied, reflexive approach – which is relatively novel in organizational research. Embodied experiences are potent, and this paper proposes that workplace food and drink rituals can powerfully influence perceptions of organizational culture. The unique contribution is in showing how embodied organizational rituals create and sustain organizational culture by using the pre-reflective moment of food ingestion to shape cognitive reconstructions of organizational culture. However, food rituals can be controlled and shaped by the organization to specifically influence employee perceptions of organizational culture. Control of food rituals can be perceived as a deliberate effort to create a constructive culture and encourage reciprocity through employee loyalty and effort.

How Humor Works

Here are two jokes; the first is an excerpt from a popular television comedy, the second is an old Scottish joke: Joke 1: What is a Sagittarius?

The Dark Side of Humor

At Victory TV, it is the first day of a new production, which is about the countryside and headquartered on a farm. The production team of 15 has been called to a meeting with the head of the production, Gudrun, to discuss what they’d be doing. Gudrun has called in the Victory health and safety officer to give a briefing on farm safety. The officer goes over some basics, then begins to talk, for any staff who might be pregnant, about some specific rules around pregnancy on farms.

The Bright Side of Humor

Are things going wrong in your life? Did you have a bad day at the office? Did the manager shout? Did the tea-lady pout? Did your clients all call you a novice? If these things are all true I’ve a tip here for you, And I want you to take it to heart. If everything’s bad, And they’re driving you mad … Here’s a new way of life you can sta-a-a-a-art …. When things are getting to you and you think they can’t get worse, Just smile and sing and dance and laugh and joke! Don’t let them get you down, don’t cry or whine or shout or curse, Just laugh and watch your woes go up in smoke! For there’s something in the rumor that a smiley sense of humor, Can put a silver lining on each cloud, And the tea-lady and boss will very soon stop being cross, But will fill your place of work with laughter loud! So if you’re feeling blue, and get it right you cannot do, And life’s a great big heap of steaming shit, The thing that you must do is just to laugh your way right through, And shovel it away into life’s pit! ‘Cos it’s very often said that we will very soon be dead, Turn up our toes and make that deathly croak, But until that final time, we can make the whole world shine, If we smile and sing and dance and laugh and joke! (One more time …)

Laugh out Loud: A User’s Guide to Workplace Humor

1. Introducing Workplace Humor -- 2. How Humor Works -- 3. Humor and Organization Culture -- 4. Forms of Workplace Humor -- 5. Technological Humor -- 6. Jokers Wild! -- 7. The Light Side of Humor -- 8. The Dark Side of Humor -- 9. Humor Boundaries -- 10. How to Manage Workplace Humor.

Manager-employee psychological contracts: enter the smartphone.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how company-provided smartphones and user-device attachment influence the psychological contract between employees and managers in terms of connectivity expectations and outcomes.,Data were collected using qualitative semi-structured interviews with 28 participants from four organizations.,The study showed that when organizations provide smartphones to their employees, the smartphones become a part of the manager-employee relationship through user-device attachment and this can change connectivity expectations for both employees and managers.,Due to participant numbers, these findings may not be generalizable to all employees and managers who receive company smartphones. However, the authors have important implications for theory. The smartphone influence on the psychological climate and its role as a signal for workplace expectations suggest that mobile information and communication technology devices must be considered in psychological contract formation, development, change and breach.,The perceived expectations can lead to hyper-connectivity which can have a number of negative performance and health outcomes such as technostress, burnout, absenteeism and work-life conflict.,Smartphone usage and user-device attachment have the potential to redefine human relations by encouraging and normalizing hyper-connected relationships.,This study makes an original contribution to psychological contract theory by showing that smartphones and attachment to these devices create perceived expectations to stay connected to work and create negative outcomes, especially for managers.