A Research On The Relationship Between Leader Humor And Employees' Creativity

Humor is a pervasive social phenomenon,but the topic of leader humor has not always been taken seriously.However,this situation has been changing,since both the practitioners and the scholars increasing their interests in this field.The combination of humor and leadership theory leads to an enhancing of leadership effectiveness,if the behavior of humor is properly used by leader in the organization,we will find effective solutions to the problems of improving the quality of communication,motivating employees and alleviating the conflicts among employees.A growing body of research testifies to the important role that humor can play in the work context in general,such as supervisor's positive and negative type of humor influences employees' work satisfaction and performance through the mediated effect of employees' attitude such as organizational commitment and work engagement.As employees' creativity becoming the key to modern business' s survival and development,there are researches find out the relationship between the leader humor and the inspiring of employees' creativity as well.Still,not only the studies about the internal mechanism of humor in leadership on employees' creativity are few,but little research had been done in domestic condition.So,we decided to explore the influencing mechanism of leader humor's different dimensions on employees' creativity.From the perspective of cognitive evaluation theory,we explores the influencing mechanism of leader's affiliative and aggressive humor on employees' creativity,with the mediating effect of intrinsic motivation and the moderating effect of employees' power distance.Using data collected from 272 employees in a wide variety of occupations and organizations,and analyzed by the hierarchical regression method,the empirical results showed that employees in different organizations are at different levels of creativity;and the results also showed that leader's affiliative humor can promote the followers' intrinsic motivation,and then inspiring employees' creativity,while leader's aggressive humor negatively influences intrinsic motivation,and finally hindered creativity;intrinsic motivation play a fully mediated role in the relationship between leader humor and employees' creativity;employees' power distance moderate the relationship between leader humor and intrinsic motivation,leader's humor will have a more effective effect on intrinsic motivation when employees' power distance is low.The practical implications of this study is as following: First,the humor behavior of leader should be taken seriously,for our findings suggests that humor in leadership can be a useful management tool.Second,supervisors should take employees' individual needs as priority,and find efficient ways to inspiring their intrinsic motivation.Third,there should be a match between leaders' behavior and employees' power distance,the consequences of leader humor should be noticed,and the way to the maximum effects of leader's behavior should be discovered.