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Introduction
One effect of globalization is that business people increasingly find tiiemselves in close contact with people from other cultures. These contacts are likely to include exposure to humor and opportunities to use it. Humor is a universal trait of social interaction, which includes the workplace. One of me most frequently observed characteristics of work groups is joking behavior and work group humor (Duncan, Smeltzer, and Leap, 1990). Although humor occurs within all cultures, people from different cultures are not amused by the same things (Nevo, Nevo, and Yin, 2001). The internalized value systems and patterns of behavior of a particular culture affect the way people experience humor (Apte, 1985). Understanding the humor of other cultures should facilitate interactions with people from those cultures, e.g., in negotiations (Vuorela, 2005). Being unaware of the appropriate way to use humor in a particular culture may cause misunderstandings and, in a work setting, could hurt employee productivity (Kalliny, Cruthirds, and Minor, 2006).
Without question, understanding Chinese culture is of great importance for many business people throughout the world. While there has been a tradition in China of contempt for many types of humor (Sample, 1996; Xu, 2004), recent observations suggest cultural change in the direction of greater appreciation of humor (Liao, 2003; Sample, 1996; Sohigian, 2007; Suoqiao, 2007; Xu, 2004). While some research has compared Western and Chinese humor use and appreciation (Chen and Martin, 2007; Liao and Chang, 2006), little work has been done in an organizational context.
This paper reports the results of a survey carried out in China in which working adults were queried about their sense of humor, use of humor at work, and impressions of their supervisors ' humor use. We examined gender differences in the appreciation and use of humor, as well as the effects of manager gender upon impressions of leadership styles and performance. According to several contingency theories of leadership, including the situational leadership model, a leader should provide guidance and direction (task behavior) and socioemotional support (relationship behavior) in varying degrees depending on me situation (Hersey, Blanchard, and Johnson, 1996). Therefore, we investigated me effects of managers' humor on respondents' impressions of those managers' task and relationship behaviors. Also, both positive (not offensive) and negative (sexual and insult) humor...