Humour and laughter in meetings: Influence, decision-making and the emergence of leadership

Abstract

Recent constructions view leadership as a process of social influence which coordinates processes of change. Moreover, such processes are not necessarily linked to role hierarchy but may be emergent and distributed within teams. However, the micro-processes through which this occurs are not well understood. The significance of the paper lies in its contribution to an understanding of the emergence of leadership in teams, and in particular how humour and laughter are drawn on as a resource by which to exert social influence.Here, we use the construct of the play frame, 'non serious' talk in which participants jointly construct extended humorous sequences as improvisations, to analyse how team members manoeuvre in order to accomplish influence, decision-making and leadership. In taking this approach we are not concerned with considerations of how managers use jokes to exercise control, or workers use humour to subvert management. Rather, we examine how humour, and particularly the laughter it engenders, can contribute to an understanding of organizations as centred on communication and founded on the precept that organizations are 'talked into being'. Here we show how talk in a play frame institutes a context which can be utilised by participants to exert influence and we demonstrate the highly contingent and contextual nature of the emergence of leadership within teams.

The power of humour to unite and divide: a case study of design coordination meetings in construction

“…Finally, humour can function as a facilitator of social conflict, allowing expression of opposition, resistance, and dissent (Mulkay 1988). Humour can be used to reinforce a position in the group (Watson and Drew 2017). It also offers the speaker the opportunity to take a position of superiority, allowing an attack on others in a socially-acceptable way or enhancing self-esteem at the expense of others (Rodrigues and Collinson 1995).…”

“…This study understands humour to be an "umbrella term" that covers a range of behaviour that is considered funny, such as wit, satire, and jokes (Lippitt 1994), but also incorporates improvised extended humorous sequences (Holmes et al 2007), and where participants themselves seemingly understand sequences of interaction to be humorous, such as where laughter was a central feature (Watson and Drew 2017). While a sense of humour is considered to be a relatively stable personality trait (Ruch 1998), within the literature the measurement of this construct remains problematic with a lack of measurement consistency (Martin 2003, Kong, Cooper andSosik 2019).…”

“…The data extracts selected to be inclu-ded in this paper were typical examples of the team's humorous behaviour throughout the observed CLDMs within each theme. The humorous episodes from the dataset that were selected represented improvised extended humorous sequences (Holmes et al 2007), or where the participants understood sequences of the interaction to be humorous and laughter was a central feature (Watson and Drew 2017), rather than instances where narratives of wit, satire and jokes were articulated (Lippitt 1994).…”

Utilizing Humor to Enhance Leadership Styles in Higher Education Administration

“…Humor is complex, multifaceted and manifests as jokes, puns, funny stories, laughter, banter, teasing, satire, sarcasm, ironic remarks, ridicules, humorous behaviors and as a stimulus response, and as disposition (Martin, 2007). Chapman & Foot (1976) identified humor as a stimulus and any communication specifically intended to provoke laughter or smiling, and as a stimulus from the context of public speaking to convey critical information designed to elicit positive reactions (Watson & Drew, 2017;Markiewicz, 1974). Scholars have categorized types of humor as stimuli or described conditions under which humor may be experienced (Rybacki & Rybacki, 1991).…”

“…These studies confirm that humor helps define and maintain social groupings and reinforce both social and positional rankings (Boland & Hoffman, 1982;Duncan, 1982Duncan, , 1985. Robert & Wilbanks, (2012) and Watson & Drew (2017) observed that humor tend to be directed downward in a hierarchical organizational structure; that is, higher status persons tended to target lower status colleagues with their humor. Lundberg (1969) noted that lower-ranking group members tend not to joke back with higher status members.…”