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(1)Employees’ Perception of Leader’s Humor Style and Pleasant Climate as Moderated by Social Conformity. by. Yu-Wen Ko. A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF BUSINESS Major: International Human Resource Development. Advisor: C. Rosa Yeh, Ph.D. National Taiwan Normal University Taipei, Taiwan February 2018.

(2) ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I appreciate everyone who helped me and encouraged me during the process of completing my thesis. Without each of you, I might not able to go through all of these. Thank you to all of your enthusiastic dedications for enriching not only my research but also embellishing my personal and academic life. Thank you to my advisor Dr. Rosa Yeh for making my idea came into a real research. Her professional wisdom and sunny guidance always shine light on my perplexities. Her patience allows me great freedom to explore my research domain. Her special topic class built my theoretical research foundation. Thank you to my Yeh’s teammates for fighting against our thesis together. You are generously providing assistances whatever I met problems or needed supports. More importantly, four of you motivated me to catch on the process. Thank you to my classmates for spending two years study together. Your words broadened my vision and deepened my thought. You always be there with the warmest care on me. Thank you to my friends and roommates for sparing time accompany me. You don’t afraid I bothered you while I was in ups and downs. You reenergized me to confront hard times and crazed about any happy moments I met. Thank you to the professor Vera Chang and professor Jin Feng Uen for sharing relevant specific research knowledge. You directed me to delimit the research scope. Thank you to the professor Inju Yang for igniting my interest in workplace humor realm. Last but not the least, thank you to my lovely family for supporting me to process this master degree. Life is totally different after I left my hometown. You always with me and be my strongest backup..

(3) ABSTRACT A pleasant organizational climate has become a source of an enterprise’s sustainable competitive advantage, because of its effect to retain important human capital. This study examines the pleasant climate created by workers’ humorous interaction under the influence of leaders’ humor styles, while social conformity acts as a moderator to the abovementioned relationship. Extending from the popular leader-member exchange (LMX) theory, this study offers another aspect by testing the link between leaders’ humor behavior and subordinates’ perception of organizational climate. The research adopts a quantitative approach using survey questionnaire to collect data. The target sample is Taiwanese employees in workplaces and a total of 448 responses were collected. SPSS and AMOS statistical packages were used to conduct the analysis. The results showed that perceived jovial leader humor style positively affects pleasant climate, but perceived aggressive leader humor style negatively impacts pleasant climate. Social conformity has no moderating effect on the relationship between jovial or aggressive leader humor style and pleasant climate. Instead, it has a direct effect on pleasant climate. Additionally, the research finds that age negatively affects pleasant climate; service work nature positively affects pleasant climate; finally, age and perceived aggressive leader humor style are negatively correlated with social conformity. Keywords: leader humor, workplace humor, social conformity, organizational climate, pleasant climate. I.

(4) TABLE OF CONTENT ABSTRACT..................................................................................................... I TABLE OF CONTENT .................................................................................. II LIST OF TABLES .........................................................................................IV LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................ V CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION ................................................................... 1 Background of the Study ..................................................................................................... 1 Problem Statement ............................................................................................................... 3 Research Purpose ................................................................................................................. 5 Research Questions .............................................................................................................. 6 Limitations and Delimitations.............................................................................................. 6 Definition of Key Terms ...................................................................................................... 7. CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW ....................................................... 9 Leaders’ Humor Behavior.................................................................................................... 9 Pleasant Climate................................................................................................................. 12 Leaders’ Humor Behavior and Pleasant Climate ............................................................... 14 Social Conformity .............................................................................................................. 18 Social Conformity as Moderator ........................................................................................ 19. CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY.............................................................. 23 Research Framework ......................................................................................................... 23 Research Design................................................................................................................. 24. II.

(5) Sampling.. .......................................................................................................................... 26 Data Collection .................................................................................................................. 29 Measurement ...................................................................................................................... 30 Validity and Reliability ...................................................................................................... 34. CHAPTER IV RESULTS AND DISCUSSION ......................................... 45 Correlation Analysis .......................................................................................................... 45 Regression Analysis ........................................................................................................... 48 Summary and Discussions ................................................................................................. 54. CHAPTER V CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS............................ 57 Conclusions ........................................................................................................................ 57 Research Implications ........................................................................................................ 59 Practical Implications......................................................................................................... 60 Limitations ......................................................................................................................... 61 Future Research Suggestions ............................................................................................. 62. REFERENCES .............................................................................................. 65 APPENDIX A QUESTIONNAIRE ........................................................... 73 APPENDIX B QUESTIONNAIRE (ENGLISH VERSION) .................... 79. III.

(6) LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1. Robert & Wilbanks (2012) Interpreted Humor Style ....................................... 11 Table 3.1. Descriptive Statistic on Sample Characteristics of Main Study (N=448) ........ 27 Table 3.2. Reliability Analysis of Pilot Test (N=73) ......................................................... 35 Table 3.3. Summary of Model Fits Indices........................................................................ 36 Table 3.4. Exploratory Factor Analysis of Leader Humor Style (Dataset A).................... 37 Table 3.5. Leader Humor Style Model Fit Summary ........................................................ 38 Table 3.6. Pleasant Climate Model Fit Summary (N=448) ............................................... 39 Table 3.7. Exploratory Factor Analysis of Social Conformity (Dataset A) ....................... 41 Table 3.8. Social Conformity Model Fit Summary ........................................................... 41 Table 3.9. Summary of Cronbach’s Alpha Reliability Coefficient of Variables and its Dimensions ....................................................................................................... 42 Table 4.1. Results of Correlation Analysis ........................................................................ 47 Table 4.2. Results of Hierarchical Regression Analysis - Aggressive Leader Humor Style.. ................................................................................................................ 49 Table 4.3. Results of Hierarchical Regression Analysis - Jovial Leader Humor Style ..... 51 Table 4.4. Results of Hierarchical Regression Analysis - Overall Leader Humor Styles . 53 Table 4.5. Hypothesis Testing Results Summary .............................................................. 56. IV.

(7) LIST OF FIGURES Figure 3.1. Research framework ........................................................................................ 23 Figure 3.2. Research procedure ......................................................................................... 25 Figure 3.3. Leader humor style modified CFA measurement model (Dataset B). ............. 39 Figure 3.4. Pleasant climate CFA measurement model. .................................................... 40 Figure 3.5. Social conformity of modified CFA measurement model (Dataset B) ............ 42 Figure 3.6. Modified research framework ......................................................................... 44. V.

(8) CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION An overview of into this research is presented. It contains the background, problem statement, research purpose and question, rationale of study, and definition of key terms.. Background of the Study In the recent decades, humor has emerged as a useful mean in assisting management efficiency. Especially in today’s business world, who masters the human capital seizes the demands of the unpredictable market. Moreover, the current employees, especially the younger members care more about the environment and quality of work. They are eager to work in happy, relaxed and interesting jobs (Liu & Wang, 2016; Romero & Pescosolido, 2008). Therefore, the role of humor and its potential outcomes have been widely discussed in the organizational behavior realm. Sierra (2013) summarized those research into three streams. The first stream contains individual employees’ workplace humor and their personal and work-related outcomes. The second stream contains group-level workplace humor and group-level outcomes. The third stream contains leader workplace humor and subordinates’ individual- and group-level outcomes. In the present study, the researcher extends the outcomes of the third stream into employees’ perception of humorous interpersonal interaction in the workplace. A pleasant organizational climate would upgrade the positive working environment and could be the organizational strategy to attract and retain employees (Cann, Watson, & Bridgewater, 2014; Scott, 2015). Altmann (2000) argued the benefits of organizational climate for an organization. He stated that employee involvement may increase their commitment and satisfaction to perform better on the jobs. Secondly, the positive working environment influences the employees work outcomes and external work outcomes (e.g. the perceptions of the quality of products or services, organization image, etc.). Comfortable communication forum assists managers to obtain important information from. 1.

(9) employees. Lastly, the designs of organizational climate survey assists managers to be more proactive in preventing the potential workplace problems, managing their employees, maintaining the quality of work environment, and improving the relevant policies through company comparison. From the research, employees are the object to generate a pleasant climate and leaders are the key facilitator. However, to date, the instruments merely design for the workplace setting and humorous interaction. In this context, Cann et al. (2014) developed a measurement exploring the humorous interaction by supervisor support and comparisons between in-group and out-group. Lastly, a new indicator was created to reveal the workplace climate by assessing the dynamic humor relationship between workers (Rawlings & Findlay 2016). This measurement supports the research design of current study to explore the pleasant climate which induced by employees. Leaders have the direct connection with and influence over followers. Recently there is a growing tendency to view humor as one of the successful leadership, and humor usages are an additional requirement for a great leader in present and future (Priest & Swain, 2002). Lots of empirical research has praised the leaders’ humor in individual and organization levels respectively (Liu & Wang, 2016). In individual level, leaders’ humor influences employee performance, job involvement, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, subjective well-being, etc. In organization level, leaders’ humor influences the overall cohesion, creativity, morale, etc. Moreover, it is found that the outcomes of socalled benign and injurious leader’s humor behavior contradict to the established conventional wisdom of humor. Humor was rarely discussed as an underlying social phenomenon (Cooper, 2008). Some recent scholars argued that the reasons of unexpected outcomes are complicated because of several factors, such as the leaders’ usage habit, tone of expression, and the contents; the subordinates’ interpretation, identification with the leader; and the leader-follower relationship. Still, all previous research affirmed the notion that leader humor is contagious among people at work. It is possible for employees 2.

(10) to accustom to certain leader humor style at the workplace. And employees may therefore be affected to apply that certain humor style to interact with members. Because humor acts as a media in social group, particularly the workplace (Owen, 2009). Thus, based on the affirmed benign outcomes from various leader humor research, it is interesting to investigate to what extent the leaders’ humor behavior/styles induce the pleasant climate among employees’ mind. Moreover, the current research proposes that the tendency for employees to follow the humor style of leader is caused by the nature of conformity. Social conformity is a kind of social influence and has been frequently studied in the field of marketing (Holmes & Marra, 2006). The desires of accuracy, affiliation, and a positive self-concept motivate one to conscientiously or unconscientiously conform others (Cialdini & Goldstein, 2004). Such as to follow the normative actions or informational provider’s advice (Deutsch & Gerard, 1955). Previous researches have argued that the conformity is stronger in a group with consensus. However, the phenomenon of social conformity has been neglected in leader humor studies while the core research attention concentrates on the leader-member exchange (LMX). So, it is an exploration to investigate another element of social influence to affect leaders’ humor on employees. Present study proposes that the force of social conformity may moderate the relationship between leaders’ humor and the quality of employees’ humorous interactive environment. This may help the leader to create a benign humor climate that everyone likes.. Problem Statement Plenty of management scholars studied the relation aspect between the leaders’ humor expression and LMX due to the reason that employees are more relationship-oriented to accept their leaders’ humorous conduct (Decker & Rotondo, 2001). Therefore, leadermember exchange is the prevalent element discussing in those relevant research. The findings shown how LMX significant impacts the effectiveness of humorous leadership on 3.

(11) individual employees’ and the teams. However, most of the scholars are limited to consider more of other potential factors that affect the whole humorous interaction at the workplace. Cooper (2008) stated that those scholars had fallen short in clearly explaining why and how the mechanism work between the humor and relationship quality, notably in the workplace context. Elucidating from the perspective of the social phenomenon, human nature inclinations would guide one towards the humorous events. Owen (2009) maintained that humor is embedded in the communication. Because the initiator and receiver of the communication may have had different interpretation of a message (Wyer, 2004), audiences could judge a humorous event and behavior based on the recognition of information providers and the situation he/she is in (Holmes & Marra, 2006). Moreover, despite the consideration of the mutual relationship, people have a tendency to be influenced by others whom they connect in an interaction activity. According to the theory of social influence, social conformity might be the factor swaying the meanings of humor message in interpersonal interaction. Social conformity is a popular research target in the marketing field investigating the customer’s purchase behavior via others effect. It usually is categorized in informational and normative sources (Holmes & Marra, 2006). The former is the referent and powerful expert, the latter is though the norm and majority pressure. It showed that human has a tendency to blindly go with or convey the personal belief or value to follow with others because of the nature of social conformity. And a recent research adapted the social process to explain the impact between the relationship of the leaders’ intrapersonal humor styles and LMX (Pundt & Herrmann, 2015). The finding showed that identification worked on leader’s affiliative humor but no mediating effect for leader’s aggressive humor. Additionally, an unexpected reciprocal relationship was found between the identification with the leader and LMX.. 4.

(12) The present research proposes an aspect that under the establishment of managersubordinate exchange, the phenomenon of social conformity may influence an employee to follow the leader’s humor towards the pleasant degree of interacting with others. Because the nature level of social conformity will increase employees pursuing satisfactions of being liked in the work unit. For instance, Holmes and Marra (2006) proposed that leader’s humor is a useful strategy to stimulate employees’ interest in the messages in a public discussion (i.e. an informative environment). This study provides another opportunity to elaborate in the humor and leadership field, and also contributes to the research in the realm of workplace humor to induce a pleasant climate.. Research Purpose Firstly, the purpose of the study is to investigate the relationship between perceived leaders’ humor behavior and pleasant climate. According to previous research, the leaders’ humor behavior can be categorized into four general styles (Martin, Puhlik-Doris, Larsen, Gray, & Weir, 2003), and pleasant climate may be induced from the workplace humor (Rawlings & Findlay, 2016). Also, from the literature, it is known that perceiving the leaders’ humor behavior could create the unmatched outcomes for employees and teams. That is, it differs in the pieces of research whether displaying leaders’ humor behavior could positively predict the outcomes of employees and teams. In addition, pleasant climate depicts more than the overall behavior in workplace humor. It implies the employees’ psychological climate of workplace humor. Therefore, in this study, the researcher attempts to obtain a deeper understanding of the four distinct leader humor styles and how they affect employees’ perception of the humorous interaction in workplace. Secondly, the study probes the moderation effect of social conformity on the relationship between perceived leaders’ humor behavior and pleasant climate. This would help to broaden the knowledge of social mechanism on humor and give a different aspect in the link between the workplace outcomes (i.e. pleasant climate which induced from the 5.

(13) workplace humor) and the effects of leaders’ humor behavior. More importantly, it tries to add value by explaining the humor effect in the relevant organizational behavior and management area. In sum, the study adopts the viewpoints from communication, interpersonal interaction, and social psychology towards humor at work. The results of the study may enable organizations and leaders to realize more about the relationship between leaders’ humor behavior and a pleasant climate and the effect of employee’s social conformity.. Research Questions In the study, the factors to be examined include leaders’ humor behavior, level of pleasant climate, and social conformity. Four styles (affiliative, aggressive, self-enhancing, and self-defeating leader humor styles) are to be studied under leaders’ humor behavior. The researcher proposes that those humor styles represent classical leader’s humorous behavior, and pleasant climate which is induced from workplace humor, is the desired outcome. Briefly, the following statements are the research questions that the researcher seeks to answer. 1.. From the employees’ perspective, do the leaders’ humor behavior really dominate pleasant climate?. 2.. Does the social conformity have a moderating effect on the relationship between perceiving the leader’s humor style and pleasant climate?. Limitations and Delimitations The study is delimited to Taiwan’s business workplaces. Meanwhile, the sample population is limited to the employees who have more than six weeks of tenure with their leader. It is expected to collect data from a sample of all the employees in Taiwan and ideally all the employees in the same workplaces. The data should reflect how employees perceive the leaders’ humor behavior and the pleasant climate which is induced by the. 6.

(14) workplace humor. Thus, the findings can only support the study to provide employees’ perceptions toward humor at work in Taiwan’s workplace. A limitation of the study is the self-report method of data collection. Although conformity scale assists to show one’s natural level of social conformity. Scholars have claimed that the self-report indicators have some tendency to inflate one real action (Paulhus & Reid, 1991). Also, this measurement cannot distinguish the sources (i.e. informative or normative influence) for an employee to perform conformity behavior.. Definition of Key Terms Workplace Humor This study derived the definition from Sierra (2013) and Thorson and Powell (1993). Workplace humor refers to the phenomenon embodied in the tendency for people to be included in a moment when the individual experience the humor created by colleagues, also the humorous interaction that the individual intends with others. Briefly, it is a set of humor reference in the workplace which serves as the basic, exclusive and consensus mode for people who work together to a further interaction opportunity (Cooper, 2008; Owen, 2009).. Leaders’ Humor Behavior This study applies the definition from Cooper (2002). Leaders’ humor behavior refers to a frequency that leaders actually share the humor with employees in the workplace. Its purpose is to identified the leaders’ general humor behaviors such as interpersonal and intrapersonal leader humor styles in the specific workplace (Robert & Wilbanks, 2012). As for the operational definition, the study adopts the definition from Martin et al. (2003). They developed a scale which divides the individual humor styles into benign/injurious and interpersonal/ intrapsychic functions. Its purpose is to represent the various ways in which one person usually use humor.. 7.

(15) Pleasant Climate This study follows the direction of Patterson et al. (2005). An exploration of individual level of organizational climate is an analysis of psychological climate. Thus, the current research depicts pleasant climate as an employee pleasant degree of humorous interaction atmosphere at the workplace. As the operational definition, the study modifies the term of pleasant climate (at work) from Rawlings and Findlay (2016). This scale initially clarifies the humorous interactions between one and others employees at the workplace. In this study, the researcher adjusts the scale into investigating an employee’s perception of the humor climate at work.. Social Conformity This study selects the definition from Asch (1951). Social conformity refers to the goal-direct and influence-related behavior. It yields a desire for an individual automatic following or converting the belief and going with the initiators. As for the operational definition, the study adopts the meaning from Mehrabian (2005). Its purpose is to identify a personal level of social conformity to the leader’s influence under different leader humor styles. The scale reveals the potential tendency to be the followers.. 8.

(16) CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW For the purpose of the study, the literature review elaborates on leaders’ humor behavior, and focuses on the relationship of four leaders’ humor styles which may influence the employees’ engagements in workplace humor to create a pleasant climate. Following sections includes leaders’ humor behavior, pleasant climate, the relationship in leaders’ humor behavior and pleasant climate, and the moderator social conformity.. Leaders’ Humor Behavior Possessing the guiding power in the social relationship, humor manipulates the quality of the leader-follower interaction subtly (Robert & Wilbanks, 2012). Through the leaders’ frequency of humor expressions, it promotes the willingness to collaborate, breaks down the perceived hierarchy and status with an upgraded work atmosphere and a better morale, increases similarity and liking in subordinates (Avolio, Howell, & Sosik, 1999; Martin, 2007; Napier & Ferris, 1993; Romero & Pescosolido, 2008). Thus, defusing situations with humor is a more suitable and understandable method on employees’ work-related challenges (Messmer, 2007). Summarizing the pieces of literature, the leaders’ humor behavior is mostly interpreted from the perspectives of interpersonal, interaction and cognition aspects. Firstly, from the interpersonal perspective. The relational process model (Cooper, 2008) stated that four distinct but interrelated processes producing humor with a good relationship with others: (1) Affective-reinforcement, which means one create the influence positively when interacting with other in-group. (2) Similarity-attraction, which allows the members to see they are the similar type of person. (3) Self-disclosure, which exposes by the individual to facilitate the group become more familiar. (4) Hierarchical Salience, which helps to melt the distance between two or more from the hierarchical distances. In this research, it is. 9.

(17) mentioned that a unilateral relationship between humor sender and humor receiver while the humor is the only factor to affect the relationship quality. However, in the real world, the humor activities acts like a reciprocal sharing process and people not only appreciate but are willing to extend the humor (Jourard, 1971; Holmes, 2000, p.164). This phenomenon can be explained from the cognition aspect in the processes of communicative transportation, for instance, the cognitive outcomes of humor such as identity maintenance and sensemaking (Tracy, Myers, & Scott, 2006). In Tracy et al. (2006) research, they proposed that the humor could effectively fulfill sensemaking (i.e. cognition outcomes), while it costs the relationship with newcomers simultaneously (i.e. relation outcomes). Oppositely, when the members all achieves the humor event with identity maintenance (i.e. cognition outcomes), the negative relationship might be attenuated (i.e. relation outcomes). Wyer’s (2004) comprehension-elaboration theory also elaborated that if individuals concern more of the humor, they might think outside of the issues before taking reaction, such as the motives behind the humor sender, what is embedded in the humor and is the message appropriate for the situation (i.e. in the workplace), and whether the humor is offensive to themselves or other groups. So, as leaders, they should consider more when creating the humor events in the workplace. Because humor has a duality powers and meanings for different individuals, groups, and workplaces. Another point from interaction, leaders’ humor is often explained in the leadermember exchange (LMX) theory. It is an approach in leadership field that addresses a dyadic relationship between leaders and followers. High level of trust, respect, and mutual obligation bring a positive relationship between leaders and followers (Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995). Cooper (2002) highlighted a positive correlation between LMX and the frequency of leaders’ use of the positive humor. Contradicting to the focus on a humor communication, subordinates attempt to interpret humor in a positive way when they have good. 10.

(18) relationships with leaders, even the humor seems negative for an outsider (Robert, Dunne, & Iun, 2016). The other standpoint was derived from affective event theory. Wheel model of humor (Robert & Wilbanks, 2012) proposed that humor events are an important driver of employee happiness and well-being. By inducing positive humorous affect, it creates a climate supporting humor use and humor events production. Successful social interaction results from individuals adapt humorous creation and/or appreciation within social contexts. Also, humor broadens individuals’ interactive behavioral repertoire, extends individual resources in the workplace, and enhances the relationship with people purposely (Fredrickson, 2001). In other words, leading with an effective usage of humor displays lower hierarchical distance, higher level of attraction and generation of positive emotions (Yang, Kitchen, & Bacouel-Jentjens, 2017). Besides, demonstrating the humor behavior of leaders, Robert and Wilbanks (2012) proposed an interpretation in the well-known Martin et al.’s (2003) four humor styles. It shows that the leaders’ intention and control for subordinate positive affectivity, which includes interpersonal humor (i.e. Affiliative and Aggressive leader humor styles) and intrapersonal humor (i.e. Self-enhancing and Self-defeating leader humor styles).. Table 2.1. Robert & Wilbanks (2012) Interpreted Humor Style Benign. Injurious. Interpersonal. Affiliative. Aggressive. Intrapersonal. Self-enhancing. Self-defeating. 11.

(19) Pleasant Climate Humor-related construct has been measured via self-report instruments, with an assumption that individual behalf somewhat similarly across situations. Little measure specifies humor within a particular context, namely the workplace, “an environment in which most people spend a large amount of their working hours, and in which they typically share in or are confronted with humorous communications” (Rawlings & Findlay, 2016, p.50). Cann and Kuiper (2014) indicated that the regular humor has been shifted, encouraged, and affected under different departmental leadership. He argued that differences in humor sharing and support are a part of humor’s impact and can be extended beyond personal sense of humor. Thus, workplace humor was first proposed as an element in the construct of organizational climate. Thorson and Powell (1993) portrayed that workplace humor as a great-time social production and people become humorous in that moment, a personal ability to recognize and accept the humor, an attitude towards humor appreciations, and a utilization in situations. Lower strains including the perceived, affective, cognitive, and physical strain and better performance are found from a positive personal interaction of humor in the workplace (Sierra, 2013). Moreover, he concluded that employee who successfully paired with a humorous work partner led to higher remark on positive humor, but no negative command was given with a non-humorous confederate colleague. In short, pieces of literature have shown the workplace humor not only brings rapport, teamwork and creativity, and more importantly, creates a more enjoyable work environment to meet a greater productivity and a better bottom line for the company (Martin, 2007). It foundationally interprets a connotation of pleasant atmosphere resulting from workplace humor. According to Equation of behavior theory (Lewin, 1951) “the perception of the situation” is composed when this psychological force induces one interacting with his or 12.

(20) her cognitive environment to generate behavior. It is proposed that workplace humor exists when employees working here feel comfortable about the humor usage, accept amiably with others humorous interaction, and know confidently to apply humor. This phenomenon outlines the definition of employee’s psychological climate. Patterson et al. (2005) addressed that psychological climate is an individual level of analysis of organizational climate. It demonstrates how an employee evaluates and interprets meaning from the work environment. Briefly, it focuses on the employee’s own perception of the workplace (Litwin & Stringer, 1968). In addition, Luthans, Avolio, Avey and Norman (2007) stated that humor is positive organizational behavior oriented which fosters employees’ positive psychological capital at work. The current research follows this direction to investigate the degree of pleasant climate as a result of humorous interacting atmosphere in various workplace. It differs from the Humor Climate Scale (HCS; Cann et al., 2014), which is the only measure looking at collective constructs (i.e. positive and negative in-group humor, negative out-group humor, supervisor support of humor) of a humor climate. In short, the definition for pleasant climate used in this study is the individual perception of co-workers’ humorous interaction at work in the workplace. Besides, Rawlings and Findlay (2016) stated measuring the workplace humor should comprise an individual’s perceptions of the types of humor used by co-workers and the types of humor elicited from the individual by the workplace influence. They developed Humor at Work (HAW; Rawlings & Findlay, 2016) for a dynamic picture of humor relationships between workers’ specific work-related behavior. It challenges the way using Humor Style Questionnaire (HSQ; Martin et al., 2003) as a measurement to study the workplace humor from distinguishing the inborn humor style. Analyzing the self-report scales relevant to humor exhibitions as the purpose to avoid the bias of self-deceptive positivity and impression management. Therefore, the present research adopts the concept. 13.

(21) from HAW. Defining the workplace humor as the lovely time for employees’ humorous interactions at work. It is the core construct of pleasant climate.. Leaders’ Humor Behavior and Pleasant Climate Despite personal sense of humor or humor styles are different, the type of humor used in the workplace is contagious (Rawlings & Finlay, 2016). Therefore, humor can construct and/or destruct the employment relationships (Malone, 1980). Especially the power relations or so-called ‘leader distance’ affects the quality of humor activities strongly (Cooper, 2008). Lundberg’s (1969) outlined the phenomenon includes (1) the jokes is not funny when the initiator of humor is of lower status than the target; (2) peers ranked in similar status have more fun together; (3) when the object is in lower status, the object is unlikely joking back to the initiator. It implied that the leaders’ intention of humor behavior controls the employees’ interaction styles in the workplace. Furthermore, employees’ interaction styles influences everyone’s degree of enjoyment and reaction towards humor events. From the literature review, it exposed that subordinates and leaders had different interpretations about the influence of leaders’ benign and harmful humor styles. Good leader-subordinate relationships make the subordinates translate the negative leaders’ humor styles into positive and as an inspiration for performances (Robert et al., 2016). The high-performing leaders display more positive humor also more negative humor such as derogating colleagues and subordinates than the average leaders’ (Sala, 2000). In short, it reveals that despite the nature of leader humor style, the usage and connotation dominates the working relationship of leader and followers. However, scholars also argue that a warm and humorous conduct is the requirement for an effective good leader to deliver guidance and direction (task behavior) and socioemotional support (relationship behavior) when confronting various situations (Hersey, Blanchard & Johnson, 1996; Priest & Swain, 2002). It shows that the positive humor 14.

(22) leading behaviors are the normative and acceptable way to link people with a more comfortable feeling in interpersonal humorous interactions (Robert et al., 2016). Therefore, the researcher proposes that it is more likely for leaders to create a pleasant climate in the workplace when employees perceive the leaders’ humor behavior.. Hypothesis 1. Employees’ perception of leaders’ humor behavior is related to the pleasant climate.. Affiliative Leader Humor Style Affiliative humor is a friendly behavior to create a positive atmosphere in social interactions (Kuiper & Leite, 2010). The intention is usually trying to put people together and reduce social distance, increase group cohesiveness, enhance employee morale and create positive work environment (Pundt & Herrmann, 2015; Ünal, 2014). It can be expected that leaders express affiliative humor in the messages tends to be easily accepted and liked by the followers, also builds group setting positively (Romero & Cruthirds, 2006). Due to the non-threatening and inside-joke nature, employees comfortably join the humor activities and share the jokes with others (Robert et al., 2016). Briefly, affiliative humor is like a social lubricant facilitating the relationship and work cohesion between leaders and followers. Also, people become positive in thinking, creative in problemsolving, responsive and productive at work (Amjed & Tirmzi, 2016). In sum, the affiliative leader humor appears more attractive to followers and creates a harmonious pleasant climate in the workplace. Therefore, a hypothesis is proposed as follows.. Hypothesis 1a.. Employees’ perception of leaders’ affiliative humor is positively. related to the pleasant climate.. 15.

(23) Aggressive Leader Humor Style Aggressive humor is a detrimental behavior at others’ expenses (Martin et al., 2003) and often produced from a superiority state (De Koning & Weiss, 2002). In earlier research, this kind of humor style has been predominated with negative outcomes such as poor work attitudes, decreased morale, and damaged interpersonal relationship (Romero & Cruthirds, 2006). With regard to workplace humor, it has been suggested not to apply aggressive humor when an individual is eager to maintain a supportive environment (Tarvin, 2012). However, aggressive humor benefits employees’ work performance and job satisfaction when a good leader-subordinate relationship exist and stimulates the employees in the context of leader’s manipulation (Cooper, 2008; Robert et al., 2016). Vinson (2006) argued a polarization of workplace atmosphere may be steered: improving/decreasing work behavior or morale, lose respect for supervisor or gain relationship with supervisor, feels uncomfortable, and harm for an organization. Thus, some literature has suggested that leaders should carefully apply aggressive humor in today’s workplace. Because the target employee may suffer more strain at that moment, it is possible to induce the long-term additive behaviors than when the entire team is targeted (Huo, Lam, & Chen, 2012). And leaders may not even be sure about the usefulness of humor in leadership (Pundt & Herrmann, 2015). So, a hypothesis is proposed as follows.. Hypothesis 1b.. Employees’ perception of leaders’ aggressive humor is negatively. related to the pleasant climate.. Self-enhancing Leader Humor Style Self-enhancing humor is a communicator-focused style which enhances own image by holding and sharing an attractive perspective (Romero & Cruthirds, 2006). People with this humor are not overly distressed and are willing to face ambiguous events (Gkorezis, 16.

(24) Hatzithomas, & Petridou, 2011). Leaders with this humor styles are expected to relieve the tension through creating laughter including amusing him-/her-self (Lynch, 2002). It can significantly promote employees job-related affective well-being, and improve employees’ confidence and creativity when confronting stress and anxiety (Ünal, 2014; Tang, 2008). Also, leaders’ self-enhancing humor has a positive effect on the organizational environment and broadens people’s thought process (Al Obthani & Omar, 2012). It eases the superior power through rising up the leader’s appeal, wins leader-subordinate relationship, and motivates the employees’ ability to deal with task problems (Ünal, 2014). In sum, the self-enhancing leader humor creates a great working atmosphere upgrading the employees’ attitudes and behaviors in the workplace, and promoting the exchange of bright ideas in the workplace. Therefore, a hypothesis is proposed as follows.. Hypothesis 1c.. Employees’ perception of leaders’ self-enhancing humor is positively. related to the pleasant climate.. Self-defeating Leader Humor Style Self-defeating humor is known as a self-disapproving behavior that individuals attempt to impress others by ridiculing and making fun of themselves (Amjed & Tirmzi, 2016; Romero & Cruthirds, 2006). Going along with others and being recognized as in-group may be the main purposes for leaders to apply this humor style (Ünal, 2014). Because it reduces bad feelings of punishment or blame from followers (Romero & Pescosolido, 2008). However, self-defeating humor has the power to weaken leaders’ credibility and create undesirable outcomes, such as making the employees underestimate leaders’ capabilities, diminish their own innovation, lose motivation towards tasks and more likely be bored, depressed and discouraged (Janes & Olsen, 2000; Lyttle, 2007).. 17.

(25) Contrary to Western culture, this leading humor style has the same meaning with selfenhancing style in the collectivistic environment (Ünal, 2014). Chan, Chen, Cho and Martin (2011) argued that the Taiwanese may not see self-defeating as a negative characteristic. Therefore, the reciprocal effects need to be carefully considered. In short, the researcher proposes that self-defeating leader humor style may promote a harmonious atmosphere of collaboration. When employees have the feeling that the leader is on their side, they develop comradery with leader for working toward the same goal, and lower their psychological distance with the leader. So, a hypothesis is proposed as follows.. Hypothesis 1d.. Employees’ perception of leaders’ self-defeating humor is positively. related to the pleasant climate.. Social Conformity In social networks, social conformity is the inclination of a person to change the behavior or belief by others by yielding to perceived majority pressure and also having a desire to ‘fit in’ or to be ‘liked’ in a group (Zhang, Tang, Zhuang, Leung, & Li, 2014). Asch (1951) defined that conformity is a phenomenon of goal-directed and influence-related behavior, but sometimes it serves more than a single, automatic and assimilated personal performance. Moreover, the goal of the people’s influence is to infiltrate the insights into the circumstances and inspire others motivations, namely, facilitates the interpersonal influence among people. Briefly, it is a type of social influence for an individual to match the group standard and be recognized (Allen, 1965; Cialdini & Trost, 1998). Asch (1951, 1952, 1956) conducted a series of famous and criticized line-judgment experiments; on social conformity and showed that personal judgment may switch under peer pressure (Asch, 1951, 1952), which supported the earliest researchers from the 1930’s. Allen (1965) concluded that social conformity performs in two ways. The first is the Public 18.

(26) Compliance, which refers to the behavior change under surveillance that differs from personal characteristics. The second is Private Acceptance, which implies the real change in personal thoughts or opinions while the person pursuits the knowledge and feels to become a confederate may be wiser. Deutsch and Gerard (1955) proposed another famous dichotomy. They outlined the influence of peers within a group. Normative Influence occurs when a person tries hard to gain social rewards and acceptance by the group. Social costs such as humiliation and ostracism are strived to avoid. Next, Informational Influence happens when a person follows the others who seem correct when appraising the opinion with those of others. Moreover, following scholars have extended the content of Deutsch and Gerard’ dichotomy: Normative Influence consists of Compliance for others’ approval and Identification for a great relationship within the team; Informational Influence generated from Internalization of the majority effect (Kelman, 1958; Smith & Machie, 2007). In short, the above-mentioned mainstream of perspectives all emphasize the majority effect and reference advice to produce the social conformity. More simply put, social conformity is a personal behavior of social influence. Additionally, the work of social influence. absorbs. all. perspectives.. Private. Acceptance. is. caused. by. the. Informational/Cognitive process and Public Compliance is formed from. the. Normative/Social process (Holzhausen & McGlynn, 2001; Manstead & Hewstone, 1996. p.564). The current research adopts Allen’s (1965) dichotomy and embodies two processes of social influence in definition.. Social Conformity as Moderator The workplace is a professional organization which requires people shared the space, knowledge, and consensus. For an employee, the first-hand information is probably from work partners or colleagues (i.e. the Normative source) and leaders (i.e. the Informative source). It can say that one’s inborn desire of belongingness enhances the social conformity 19.

(27) to achieve the satisfaction need. When being recognized and accepted by others members, work benefits and relevant opportunities would increase. Better work relationships are also created (Cialdini & Goldstein, 2004). Moreover, Owen (2009) stated that social conformity can be viewed as a social control strategy moderating members to generate and participate the humor; especially in the workplace the effect can pervade from group to the whole organization. Employees may observe others’ reactions before showing behavior in the workplace and create the humorous climate together, for instance, by displaying laughing. Contemporary researchers have argued inconsistent outcomes about responding to the leader humor. The reasons include the employees’ perspective of leaders, delivery trails of noted person and social processes, and the feelings and understanding towards the humor source (Cooper, 2008). Therefore, the shared humor such as nonsense (incongruity), teasing (aggressive), self-deprecating (self-defeating), clowning (affiliative), sarcastic (aggressive), etc. can be equally enjoyable or offensive from person to person (Ackroyd & Thompson, 1999; Cooper, 2008). However, the social conformity may prompt employees to react to humor events similarly. Make people being comfortable and ease at the workplace humor. Thus, it can be proposed that the tendency of social conformity sways employees’ willingness of joining the humor event and the extent of appreciation of the leader’s humor. The pleasant atmosphere of humor workplace would consequently be cultivated. Furthermore, level of pleasant climate is improved. In this study, the researcher stresses on the leader’s effects. Hierarchical salience enlarges the psychological distance between employees and leaders (Cooper, 2008). Especially, leaders are respected as role models. So, an employee has higher tendency considering the leader’s humor style as the reference to follow and imitate in the workplace. Or oppositely, an employee is likely to follow colleagues’ style to react to leader humor when considering to build relationship within the group. Briefly, social conformity promotes an employee’s sense of pleasant climate under his or her leader’s leading humor 20.

(28) style. The influence of conformity not only transforms one behavior (Allen, 1965) but probably encourage specific ways of humor utilization. Even the newcomer has no idea about the humorous events, one can learn to apply and participate the humor through informational support and normative guidance (Cialdini & Goldstein, 2004). All in all, the social conformity moderates particularly in less compulsory context (Sadat, 2011). Therefore, the second hypothesis is developed as follows.. Hypothesis 2.. Employee’s social conformity has a positive moderating effect on the. relationship between perceived leader’s humor and pleasant climate.. 21.

(29) CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY This chapter outlines the research framework, research design, sampling, data collection, measurement, validity and reliability. Furthermore, readjustment of hypotheses was proposed and discussed.. Research Framework The researcher investigated to what extent the power of personal social conformity influences the effect of perceived leaders’ intended humor toward an individual’s perception of pleasant climate. Figure 3.1 illustrates four leaders’ humor styles which are the independent variables; pleasant climate which is formed from employee’s perception of workplace humor, is the dependent variable; social conformity is the moderator, which is proposed to have a positive moderating effect on the relationship between perceived leaders’ humor behavior and pleasant climate.. Figure 3.1. Research framework 23.

(30) The hypotheses of the study are as follows: Hypothesis 1.. Employees’ perception of leaders’ humor behavior is related to the. pleasant climate. Hypothesis 1a.. Employees’ perception of leaders’ affiliative humor is positively. related to the pleasant climate. Hypothesis 1b.. Employees’ perception of leaders’ aggressive humor is negatively. related to the pleasant climate. Hypothesis 1c.. Employees’ perception of leaders’ self-enhancing humor is positively. related to the pleasant climate. Hypothesis 1d.. Employees’ perception of leaders’ self-defeating humor is positively. related to the pleasant climate. Hypothesis 2.. Employee’s social conformity has a positive moderating effect on the. relationship between perceived leader’s humor and pleasant climate.. Research Design A quantitative approach was adopted for this study to achieve its objective to analyze the relationship between perceived four styles of leaders’ humor behaviors and the pleasant climate, as moderated by the employees’ personal social conformity. In the data collection, the leader’s leading humor style was obtained and tested from employee’s evaluation, and an employee self-report measurement of a pleasant climate at work was used to reveal the atmosphere at work in employees’ mind. The moderating effect of personal social conformity was investigated on the relationship of leaders’ leading humor behavior and pleasant climate. Questionnaire items were translated from English to Chinese. Backtranslation and accuracy check of translations were done by two Chinese native speakers who are fluent in English. Considering the convenience for the respondents, both online and paper surveys were adopted simultaneously. Statistical software SPSS v.22 and SPSS AMOS were utilized in analyzing the respondents’ answer to the questionnaire. 24.

(31) In order to complete the study, eight steps of research procedure were conducted following the Figure 3.2. The first step was to narrow down and identify the research topic based on literature review of interested directions. The second step was to build background knowledge and review the literature to identify variables of interest related to the topic. Based on the literature review the research purpose and questions were proposed. Then the research framework and hypothesis were developed to show the structure of the relationship between the variables. A questionnaire was designed with proper measurement to collect data for the study. A pilot test was conducted to ensure the validity and reliability of the measurement. Then data was collected and analyzed to test the hypotheses and interpreted to obtain the findings. Finally, the results, conclusions, and future suggestions were summarized and proposed.. Figure 3.2. Research procedure. 25.

(32) Sampling For the study purpose to explore the employees’ subjective interpersonal outcomes, the sample of this study focused on the employees working in various Taiwanese organizations and having more than six weeks collaborating with his/her manager, based on scholars’ suggestion that the minimum time to cultivate LMX can be expected in six weeks (Liden, Wayne, & Stilwell, 1993; Pundt & Herrmann, 2015). Therefore, the prerequisite for ensuring the inclusion is a tenure with the leader of longer than six weeks. Besides, the cover letter had explained that to qualify as the sample the participant would need to have two or more colleagues to interact at work and one picked leader whom most familiar with and have most frequent contact at the workplace.. Sample Profile The researcher collected a total of 596 completed questionnaires. To ensure the respondents were qualified to represent the phenomenon in their workplace, those answering to no facing Colleagues or Leader in Contact Type were excluded in the sample. Therefore, a total of 521 responses remained: 73 (65 online, 8 hardcopy) questionnaires for the pilot test; 448 (407 online, 41 hardcopy) for the main study. Descriptive statistics was applied to present the key characteristics. Pilot test. A total of 73 responses were collected by the snowball contact with personal network. These sample data helped to provide a primary understanding of the relationships among study variables and ensured the face validity and reliability of the questionnaire. Those respondents had worked in service (61.6%) and non-service (38.4%) jobs with a tenure with a current leader from 2.5 months up to more than 35 years. Most of them aged 21~25 years old (35.6%) and had an age disparity ranged in 6~10 years (30.1%). Weekly immediate work contact of 1~5 hours with the leader (39.7%) was the majority.. 26.

(33) Main study. From the 448 respondents, there were 157 (35%) males and 291 (65%) females; their leaders included 284 males (63.4%) and 164 females (36.6%). The age range of 21~26 was the major group (34.4%); age disparity with leader was in majority of 1~5 years (23.9%). Above half of the participants hold a bachelor degree (62.5%). Depicting the context of the workplace, 291 (65%) respondents were in service work and 157 (35%) were in non-service work. The order of frequency contact with client and suppliers ranged from no contact (0) to last contact (4); with colleagues and supervisor from first frequency contact (1) to last contact (4). Capturing the familiarity with leader, tenure with leader had lasted from 1.5 months up to 33 years long. The majority of the respondents had immediate 1~5 hours a week (33%) of work contact with the leader. Below shown the summary of the sample features. Table 3.1. Descriptive Statistic on Sample Characteristics of Main Study (N=448) Variable. Item. Percentage (%). Self. Male Female. 157 291. 35 65. Leader. Male Female. 284 164. 63.4 36.6. 20 or below 21-25 26-30 31-35. 2 154 47 46. 0.4 34.4 10.5 10.3. 36-40 41-45 46-50 51-55 56-60 61 or above. 35 28 54 52 22 8. 7.8 6.3 12.1 11.6 4.9 1.8. Gender. Age. Frequency. Self. (continued). 27.

(34) Table 3.1. (continued) Variable. Age. Item. Frequency. Percentage (%). Same year. 17. 3.8. 1-5 years. 107. 23.9. 6-10 years. 76. 17. 11-15 years Disparity 16-20 years with Leader 21-25 years. 62. 13.8. 57. 12.7. 41. 9.2. 26-30 years. 29. 6.5. 31-35 years. 16. 3.6. More than 36 years. 43. 9.6. High school and below Bachelor degree Master degree PHD degree. 50. 11.2. 280 108 10. 62.5 24.1 2.2. Service Non-service. 291 157. 65 35. 0 1 2 3 4. 74 155 57 97 65. 16.5 34.6 12.7 21.7 14.5. Suppliers 0 Contact Type 1 (Unit: Rank) 2. 150 52 49. 33.5 11.6 10.9. 3 4. 108 89. 24.1 19.9. Colleagues 1 2 3 4. 266 100 40 42. 59.4 22.3 8.9 9.4. Education. Work Nature. Client. Workplace Context. (continued) 28.

(35) Table 3.1. (continued) Variable. Workplace Context. Relationship with leader. Item Supervisor 1 Contact Type 2 (Unit: Rank) 3 4. Frequency. Percentage (%). 160 151 399 38. 35.7 33.7 22.1 8.5. Lower than 1 1-5. 124 183. 27.7 40.8. 6-10 Tenure 11-15 (Unit: Year) 16-20 21-25 26-30 More than 30. 72 25 22 13 7 2. 16.1 5.7 4.9 2.9 1.6 0.4. 1-5 6-10 11-15 Work contact 16-20 (Unit: 21-25 Hours/week) 26~30 31~35 More than 36. 148 79 43 43. 33.0 17.6 9.6 9.6. 34 25 17 59. 7.6 5.6 3.8 13.2. Data Collection The data was collected in June and July of 2017, three weeks after the pilot test. Initial contact with the potential candidates was made via the researcher’s personal contacts to working people. Snowball sampling method was applied as a tool for acquiring more data by including in the appreciation letter an invitation to send the survey link to other employees that may be interested in participating. In the invitation, the study purposes were briefly explained. Participant were told that the survey is related to employee perception of interpersonal interaction at work, the importance of the participant’s contribution, the value that the results are going to provide, 29.

(36) and around 20 minutes was needed to complete the questionnaire. The prerequisite question was designed on the cover page of questionnaire. It helped the research filter the qualified candidates. Moreover, “focusing on one picked leader” was stressed throughout all the questionnaire texts. While employee submitted the questionnaire, a small gift was provided to hard-copy respondents; a drawing of the gift was conducted for on-line respondents who provide the personal contact to participate.. Measurement The complete questionnaire can be found in Appendix A. Totally, it contains ten control variables and three main variables with 48 items: Perceived leader’s humor style with 29 items; pleasant climate with 8 items; social conformity with 11 items.. Leaders’ Humor Styles Humor Style Questionnaire (HSQ; Martin et al., 2003), a self-report instrument with four dimensions was used to measure leaders’ humor styles from the subordinates’ point of view. It is designed to assess an individual’s particular use of humor style daily and naturally. In the present study, the measurement adopted the receiver version of HSQ (Scott, 2015). As this research targets the employees’ perspectives, it is rigorous to apply the scale on receivers, not on initiators (Sosik, 2012). The research states that the leader inclines to exhibit one of the four humor behavior styles mostly at the workplace and the receiver HSQ is a suitable measurement. The receiver HSQ contains 29 items. There are 16 items in interpersonal humor (8 in Affiliative and Aggressive styles respectively), and 13 items in intrapersonal humor (6 in Self-enhancing and 7 in Self-defeating style). A 7 point Likert scale will be used from totally disagree (1) to totally agree (7). Reliability of the four scales was .731, .762, .693, and .777. The same factor structure of Traditional Chinese version of the Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ-TC; Chan et al., 2011), which was revised and served as a means to. 30.

(37) investigate humor styles in Taiwan’s context, has an acceptable internal consistency (α= .73 - .88) and a good test-retest reliability. Four subscales and revised example items are as below: 1. Affiliative humor “My leader appears to enjoy making people laugh”, and “My leader rarely makes other people laugh by telling funny stories about himself/herself (reverse-scored)”. 2. Aggressive humor “If someone makes a mistake, my leader will often tease them about it”, and “My leader never participates in laughing at others even if others are doing it (reverse-scored)”. 3. Self-enhancing humor “My leader is often amused by the absurdities of life”, and “When my leader is feeling sad or upset, he/she usually lose his/her sense of humor (reverse-scored)”. 4. Self-defeating humor “My leader will often get carried away in putting he/her down if it makes everyone laugh”, and “My leader lets everyone laugh at him/her as a way of keeping us in good spirits (reverse-scored)”.. Pleasant Climate The measurement of Pleasant Climate Scale was initially selected from Humor at Work (HAW; Rawlings & Findlay, 2016) scale, a dynamic indicator of humor relationships among workers. Because of the objectives of the present study, the Unpleasant Climate Scale in HAW which investigates personal job satisfaction when exposed to the others’ behavior is not a suitable measurement tool. Pleasant Climate Scale assesses the humorous behavior in the natural workplace environment or social groupings, disclosing humor in the context of interpersonal interaction such as the frequency of humor used by an individual preference and the perception of the use of others’ humor in the workplace. In order to fully depicting the 31.

(38) humor climate, the present research revised the scale into capturing the employee’s perception of the humorous atmosphere at the workplace. 8-items with two reverse scoring items are included with a 5 point Likert scale from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5). It has a moderate reliability of .78. Revised sample items are “People in my unit like to share funny things that happen to them with the colleagues they work with”, and “People in my unit just like to do their jobs without humorous distraction (reverse-scored)”.. Social Conformity The measurement adapts the Conformity Scale (CS; Mehrabian, 2005), an assessment that measures the tendency to be the follower. It exposes the degree to which a person has a characteristic or willingness to identify, comply with, and emulate others such as to agree with other’s ideas, values, and behaviors in the purpose to avoid negative interaction (Mehrabian, 2005). The CS scale consists 11 items with four reverse items. And used a 9 point Likert scale from “very strong disagreement (1) to very strong agreement (9). It has a satisfactory reliability coefficient of .77 and a test-retest intercorrelation of .73 (Mehrabian & Stefl, 1995). Samples items are “I tend to rely on others when I have to make an important decision quickly’’, and “I don’t give in to others easily (reverse-scored)”.. Control Variables A total of ten specific variables were included as controls in the analyses. Two major reasons underlie the inclusion of demographic controls. Firstly, because humor is a social interpersonal interactive group product (Owen, 2009), it takes time to cultivate especially in the workplace which comprises managers level and employees level (Robert et al., 2016). Secondly, social conformity exists when a person follows the seemingly right people or only being attracted to follow by nature (Asch, 1951). All these variables were measured in the survey questionnaire in the background information part. 32.

(39) Personal background. Five variables are related to personal information of the respondents and the leader themselves. Gender (self) and Gender (leader). Gender may have an effect on the preference of different usages of humor behavior. For example, male may be more likely to follow the informational source, while females follow the group pressure (Eagly & Chrvala, 1986). A nominal measure with two options (male/female) was applied to both leaders and respondents. Age (self) and Age discrepancy. Age indicates the personal tendency to feel closer to the people with narrower age gap (Scott, 2015). The ordinal questions were adopted. Ten options were provided to ask the respondent’s age from below 20 years old, 21-25 years old, 26-30 years old, 31-35 years old, 36-40 years old, 41-45 years old, 46-50 years old, 51-55 years old, 56-60 years old, to above 61 years old. Nine options were provided for “age disparity between leader and member” from same year, 1-5 years, 6-10 years, 11-15 years, 16-20 years, 21-25 years, 26-30 years, 31-35 years, to above 36 years. Education. It has a potential influence on social conformity, which is a tendency to follow a group of more highly educated whom may create a demand for others to conform to their expertise (Ganser & Zwiefelhofer, 2006), or of a higher level of cognition to interpret the humor when interacting with other in the humorous event (Scott, 2015). An ordinal question with four options from high school and below, bachelor degree, master degree, to PHD degree. Workplace context. Two variables were designed to understand the context of the workplace. Due to they may potentially guide the humor usages in interpersonal interaction. Work nature. It attempted to capture the nature of the respondent’s work, and was measured using two options: service or non-service. Leader most and Colleague most. Contact type attempted to capture the type of people in the current work the respondent mostly faces, and was measured with a ranking 33.

(40) order of four groups, namely customers, suppliers, peers, and supervisor. Five Arabic number were provided for the ranking: 1 (most frequently facing group), 2 (second most frequently facing group), 3 (third most frequently facing group), 4 (least frequently facing group), and 0 (no facing that certain group). Work relationship with the manager/leader. Two variables are related to the intensity of relationship between the respondent and the leader. Tenure with leader. It shows how familiar the respondent is with the manager and potentially the leader’s humor styles (Cooper, 2002; Pundt & Herrmann, 2015; Robert et al., 2016). This was measured using an open-ended question which asked the time (in years and months) the respondent has worked for the current manager. Weekly contact. Frequency of immediate contact with the manager at work shows the potential of leader’s humor affecting the employee’s humor style (Pundt & Herrmann, 2015; Scott, 2015), and was measured using an ordinal question with eight choices from 1-5 hours/week, 6-10 hours/week, 11-15 hours/week, 16-20 hours/week, 21-25 hours/week, 26-30 hours/week, 31-35 hours/week, to more than 36 hours/week.. Validity and Reliability This section contains three parts: The pilot test section explored the reliability of instrument design. The main study section presented the result of construct validity, reliability, and common method variance. The summary of validity and reliability section proposed the changes in research framework and hypothesis. Besides, content validity was ensured by using mature measurement scales, the accuracy in translation, and expert review.. Pilot Test The variables’ Cronbach’s Alpha was observed to assess the reliability of the measurement usage. Table 3.2 shows a lower Cronbach’s alpha of Social Conformity (.64) below the .7 acceptable value (Nunnally & Bernstein, 1994). It is considered reasonable. 34.

(41) when analyzing a small sample. Additionally, Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of .6 - .7 is still considered acceptable (George & Mallery, 2003). Table 3.2. Reliability Analysis of Pilot Test (N=73) Scales Leader Humor Style Affiliative Aggressive Self-enhancing Self-defeating Pleasant Climate Social Conformity. Number of Items. Cronbach’s Alpha. 29 8 8. .83 .89 .72. 6 7 8 11. .71 .77 .88 .64. Main Study Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) were applied collectively to ensure the construct validity. First, items of each variable were run through CFA using AMOS to see whether the data fit the theoretical measurement model. When the CFA resulted in less-than-satisfactory fit, the measurement model was modified based on a procedure described below. The modified measurement model was subsequently cross validated to ensure the construct validity. To process this procedure, the sample was split in half randomly. Data from the first half of the sample was used to conduct an EFA. Measurement of sampling adequacy was checked by Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) above .5 and Bartlett’s test of sphericity significant (Kaiser, 1974). Any item with a factor loading less than .4 (Costello and Osborne, 2005) and cross loaded items were removed to purify of the scale. Then, data from the second half of the sample was used in a CFA to test whether the modified measurement model achieves an acceptable goodness of fit. The criteria of fit indices are listed in Table 3.3. In short, except Pleasant Climate which has a satisfactory. 35.

(42) model fit in CFA, measurement of Leader Humor Style and Social Conformity were modified and went through abovementioned process for cross validation. Finally, the variables with their revised items were tested on internal consistency of reliability via Cronbach’s alpha coefficient. Common method variance (CMV) was tested to understand the threat of type I or type II errors in the variances. Table 3.3. Summary of Model Fits Indices Index. Good fit. Acceptable fit. χ2/DF. 2-5. <5. GFI. >.95. >.90. AGFI. >.90. >.85. RMSEA. <.08. .08-.1. SRMR. <.05. ≦.08. AVE. >.7. >.5. CR. -. ≧.7. Note. Summary according to Hooper, Coughlan, and Mullen (2008) and Fornell and Larcker (1981) (Last two rows).. Leaders’ humor style. The 29-item leader humor style scale underwent initial CFA based on the theoretical factor structure. The result yielded a poor model fit. Therefore, the research proceeded to draw a modified model by splitting the sample into two, dataset A and B. First, dataset A was put to run EFA. The EFA result showed that items of Affiliative, Self-enhancing, Self-defeating mainly loaded onto one component; items of Aggressive loaded onto another component. It indicated the respondents of the main study could only. 36.

(43) distinguish two humor styles, the aggressive leader humor styles and others. Other three leader styles (i.e. Affiliative, Self-enhancing, and Self-defeating) were perceived to function similarly from the respondents’ point of view. Thus, the researcher combined Affiliative, Self-enhancing, and Self-defeating and renamed them Jovial leader humor style (JO). Moreover, fourteen items with factor loading less than .4 or items with cross-loading were deleted: AF1, AF3, AF5, AF7, AF8, SE5, SD2, SD4, SD5, SD6, SD7, AG3, AG4, AG5. Table 3.4. Exploratory Factor Analysis of Leader Humor Style (Dataset A) Factor Item. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Final Dimension. AF4. 0.815. JO. AF2. 0.779. JO. SE1. 0.752. JO. AF7. 0.739. AF6. 0.734. JO. SE2. 0.705. JO. SE4. 0.697. JO. SD1. 0.667. JO. AF5. 0.66. SE3. 0.65. AF1. 0.607. SE6. 0.565. AF8. 0.448. SD3. 0.418. 0.425. Item Deleted. Deleted. 0.474. Deleted JO. 0.468. Deleted JO Deleted JO. AG8. 0.749. AG. AG6. 0.69. AG. AG1. 0.674. AG (continued). 37.

(44) Table 3.4. (continued) Factor Item AG2 AG7 AG3 SD5 SD7 SD2 SD6 AG5 SD4 AF3. 1. 2. 3. 4. 0.636 0.607 0.541. Final Dimension. Item Deleted. AG AG -0.467. 0.469. 0.779 0.67 0.551. 0.45. 0.487 0.464. 0.478. AG4 SE5. 5. 0.401. Deleted Deleted Deleted Deleted Deleted Deleted Deleted Deleted. 0.672 0.515 0.414. Deleted Deleted. 0.824. Note. Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis. Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization. KMO measure of sampling adequacy: .928. Bartlett’s test of sphericity: .000. JO= Jovial Leader Humor Style; AG= Aggressive Leader Humor Style.. Then, dataset B was used in CFA to test the fit of the modified model. The revised model reports better fit. So, the LHS modified model replaced the original model and was utilized. Table 3.5 shows the model fit summary. Figure 3.3 displays the CFA result of the modified measurement model. Table 3.5. Leader Humor Style Model Fit Summary χ2 Original 29 items Modified 15 items. df. P. χ2/df. GFI AGFI. RMSEA. SRMR. AVE. CR. 1536.08. 371. .000. 4.14. .78. .74. .08. .91. .23. .72. 185.71. 89. .000. 2.09. .90. .87. .07. .07. .51. .94. 38.

(45) Figure 3.3. Leader humor style modified CFA measurement model (Dataset B).. Pleasant climate. The 8-item PC scale was tested in the initial CFA based on the theoretical factor structure. The result yielded a satisfactory model fit: χ2/df (4.49) and RMSEA (.09) show acceptable fit; GFI (.95), AGFI (.91), and SRMR (.05) are a good fit; CR (.84) meets the acceptable criteria. However, AVE (.40) is lower than the standard .5. It is one of the limitations of the current study. Figure 3.4 and Table 3.6 presents the measurement model and model fit summary. Table 3.6. Pleasant Climate Model Fit Summary (N=448) χ2 8 items. 89.836. df 20. P. χ2/df. GFI. AGFI. RMSEA. SRMR. AVE. CR. .000. 4.49. .95. .90. .09. .05. .40. .84. 39.

(46) Figure 3.4. Pleasant climate CFA measurement model.. Social conformity. The 11-item SC was tested in the initial CFA based on the theoretical factor structure. The result showed a poor model fit. Therefore, modification and cross validation were performed through splitting sample in two randomly, and using EFA result from dataset A to modify measurement and CFA with dataset B to cross validate the modified model. First, three components emerged in the EFA result of dataset A. Item SC2 (-.78) was dropped because of significant negative factor loading. Then the EFA test was processed again. Two components emerged in the EFA result: Component 1 contains items expressing moderate feelings, SC1, SC3, SC4, SC5, SC6, SC8, SC10, and one reverse-scoring item SC2; component 2 includes reverse-scoring items and all items that express intense feelings, SC7, SC9, SC1. Pilot test showed this phenomenon too. It indicated that respondents had a different perception towards items that require different level of reaction to the stimulations. As a result, the modified CFA was structured into two dimensions.. 40.

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