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Humor in meetings : does it affect their effectiveness?

Beerens, K.B.M. (2016) Humor in meetings : does it affect their effectiveness?

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Abstract:Humor is an important element of human interaction and therefore has an impact on how workgroups operate effectively and subsequently on organizations. However in the literature, empirical research within the team context is scarce. Humor is an important contributor to group productivity because of its positive effect on group cohesiveness, communication and creativity, hence it seems a ‘valuable behavior’ in organizations. In this study we do not only examine the direct effect of humor on team effectiveness, but also investigate the sequences of behaviour after humor is displayed. During regular staff meetings, 79 leaders and their followers were video-taped, and their behaviors were coded by two independent raters. Because we were interested in Leader-Follower and Follower-Leader interaction sequences, we analysed interaction sequence tables in order to determine how often ‘humor’ was followed by other behavior. Three categories of chain-reactions are distinguished: Humor – Humor, Humor- Transformational Style, Humor – Transactional Style. The effectiveness scores were obtained through survey data among leaders and followers. Results indicated that a transactional reaction of the leader on humor behavior of a follower, can decreases team effectiveness significantly. On the other hand, humor displayed by the leader ‘works’ only, when the follower reacts with transformational behavior.
Item Type:Essay (Master)
Faculty:BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Subject:85 business administration, organizational science
Programme:Business Administration MSc (60644)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/69400
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