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This study explored humor production and communicator style within the dyadic communicative relationship between organizational managers and subordinates. Research questions considered positive, expressive, and negative humor functions and manager-subordinate relational style, communication style, sex, and dyad characteristics. Results indicated that both organizational managers and subordinates report using conversational humor, mostly positive and expressive humor. Results also indicate communicator image, dominant or affiliative communication style, and sex are related to the type of conversational humor initiated by organizational managers and subordinates. It appears that organizational power/dominance and sex are better predictors of humor usage than other characteristics. Overall, results suggest that relational factors, such as one's humor, may be important to the enactment of organizational citizenship behaviors among subordinates.
The tensions, strains, and paradoxes of organizational life are often reflected in dyadic relationships between organizational managers and subordinates. These relationships illustrate aspects of organizational effectiveness, efficiency, and citizenship. Using humor in superior/subordinate relationships is one way individuals may cope with day-to-day interactions. But as Malone (1980) cautioned, humor can be both productive and destructive in managerial relationships. Martin and Gayle (1999) found that managers use humor production as part of their overall communication style, but little or no research has explored humor in manager-subordinate dyadic communication. Not all individuals have the same conversational propensity to initiate conversational humor (Booth-Butterfield & Booth-Butterfield, 1991). This study investigates the relationships among positive, expressive, arid negative humor use and manager-subordinate relations, communication style, same-sex and different-sex manager-subordinate dyads along with other dyadic characteristics, and explores the possible ramifications for enhancing organizational citizenship behaviors.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Managers and subordinates use a variety of communication strategies and resources to manage daily interactions as they work together. Researchers have viewed manager/ subordinate communication through a variety of lenses. Some research focused on individual communication characteristics of the manager and the subordinate, and other research investigated communicative interactions from a dyadic perspective. Other research has examined interactions that result in the enactment of discretionary, extrarole behaviors that promote organizational effectiveness and efficiency: the hallmarks of positive organizational citizenship behaviors. At issue is whether the scope of the managers' or subordinates' communicator styles are affected by each other's communication in an organizational setting. Complicating this line of research is the absence of any...