Combating workplace loneliness climate and enhancing team performance: The roles of leader humor and team bureaucratic practices

Fu Yang and Deping Wen

Journal of Business Research, 2021, vol. 136, issue C, 305-315

Abstract: Extending research on loneliness at work to the team level, we integrate leader humor and team bureaucratic practices literature to predict how and when team performance is enhanced by combatting workplace loneliness climate. We tested our theoretical model across two studies. In Study 1, we found that leader sense of humor resulted in lower workplace loneliness climate and, thus, in better team performance. Furthermore, leader sense of humor was negatively related to workplace loneliness climate only under low team bureaucratic practices. Study 2 replicated and extended Study 1 by testing the critical role of leader humor styles. Results illustrated that affiliative humor strengthened, while aggressive humor weakened, the negative effect of leader sense of humor on workplace loneliness climate. These findings present a comprehensive approach to broadening knowledge about leader humor and loneliness at work in teams, and they are insightful to practitioners who aim to build effective teams.

Keywords: Loneliness; Climate; Humor; Team bureaucratic practices; Team performance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296321005361
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:136:y:2021:i:c:p:305-315

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2021.07.053

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Research is currently edited by A. G. Woodside

More articles in Journal of Business Research from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().