Perception of leaders' sense of humor, communication openness, and work engagement: Analysis in Portuguese organizational context

Recently, there has been a growing recognition of the importance of humor in organizational setting, where it may potentially enhance management effectiveness. This study aims to analyse the impact of employees’ perceptions regarding their leader’s sense of humor on two relevant organizational variables: communication openness, and employee work engagement. The study follows a multidimensional conceptualization of humor, including four dimensions: humor production and social uses of humor, coping/ adaptive humor, appreciation of humor, and attitudes towards humor. Trough an online questionnaire survey, a sample of 170 individuals was gathered. The results suggest that in general, respondents have a positive perception towards their leader’s sense of humor, believe they have an open communication environment, and feel engaged in their work. However, significant differences were found within the sample for work engagement. Participants who are younger, single, do not have a permanent contract, are in the organization for less than a year, and do not have a managerial role, have significantly lower means. Significant differences are also found in the dimension of attitudes towards humor, where individuals with a level of education up to the 12th year present a significantly lower mean. Using the Structural Equations Modelling, the results indicate the existence of a positive association between the perception of leader’s sense of humor and communication openness, as well as between that perception and work engagement. Communication openness is also positively associated with work engagement and plays a mediating role between leader’s sense of humor and work engagement. However, in all relationships under study, only one dimension of sense of humor - humor production and social uses of humor - entailed significant associations. Nevertheless, the proposed model research allows to explain 25,1% of the variance for work engagement and 14% of the variance for communication openness.