Impact of leader aggressive humor on employee extra-role behaviors: opposite moderating effects of team identification and professional identification
Journal of Managerial Psychology
ISSN: 0268-3946
Article publication date: 2 May 2023
Issue publication date: 7 June 2023
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship of leader aggressive humor on employee extra-role behaviors of proactivity and creativity by probing feeling ostracized as a mediator and team identification and professional identification as boundary conditions.
Design/methodology/approach
A survey sample of 347 employees was collected from three technology companies in Sichuan and Guizhou, China. Hierarchical regression analysis and PROCESS macro in SPSS were used to test the hypotheses.
Findings
The results indicate that leader aggressive humor is negatively related to employee extra-role behaviors. Feeling ostracized is an important mechanism linking leader aggressive humor and employee extra-role behaviors and team identification and professional identification moderate the relationship.
Practical implications
Organizations should make rules to prevent leaders from using aggressive humorous behaviors and encourage coworkers to show more affiliative funny behaviors during breaks to reduce employees' sense of ostracism.
Originality/value
Building on sociometer theory, this research demonstrates the opposite moderating effects of team identification and professional identification in the effects of leader aggressive humor on feeling ostracized and consequently employee extra-role behaviors.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 71902015), the Science and Technology Research Program of Chongqing Municipal Education Commission (Grant No. KJQN202201122), the Key Funded Projects in the “13th Five-Year Plan” of Chongqing Educational Science in 2019(Grant No. 2019-GX-020),the Cultivation Plan of the National Natural Science Foundation and the Social Science Foundation Project, and the Action Plan for High Quality Development of Graduate Education at Chongqing University of Technology (gzlcx20223101).
Citation
Yang, C. and Yang, X. (2023), "Impact of leader aggressive humor on employee extra-role behaviors: opposite moderating effects of team identification and professional identification", Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 38 No. 4, pp. 245-259. https://doi.org/10.1108/JMP-04-2022-0203
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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