Management humor : asset or liability ?

Abstract

Should managers deliberately employ humor to persuade and motivate staff? A framework is presented for analyzing the role of humor in managerial communications. The framework includes the presenter, recipient, message, and medium and elaborates cognitive and emotional reactions to humor by recipients. The framework is applied to analyses of the likely impacts of humor in problem solving and creativity. Facilitators and constraints for the effects of humor in managerial communications are discussed.