Introduction

It has been recently suggested that firms should engage themselves with customers on social media adopting a conversational human voice (CHV; Crijns et al. 2017). CHV is defined as “an engaging and natural style of organizational communication as perceived by an organization’s publics based on interactions between individuals in the organization and individuals in publics” (Kelleher 2009). The implications and use of CHV have been explored widely within corporate and marketing communications (Liebrecht et al. 2021). One of the CHV tactics in online brand communication is invitational rhetoric. It is “characterized by a style of communication that is oriented to a negotiated exchange of ideas and opinions with stakeholders” (van Noort et al. 2014). Using humour is one of the categories of invitational rhetoric, among other categories such as stimulating dialogues, acknowledging, analogizing, well-wishing, or showing sympathy or empathy (Liebrecht et al. 2021). However, despite many positive effects of CHV in online brand messages on consumer’s brand evaluations, such as trust and commitment (Kelleher 2009), there are also studies showing negative implications (Liebrecht et al. 2021). These more critical studies offer different perspectives on how a human tone of voice is not necessarily the company’s best decision in all business communication situations (Barcelos et al. 2018; Crijns et al. 2017) and this study continues this discussion within the specific situation of using dark humour in Internet recruitment advertising.

When some small companies have decided to communicate using dark humour in brand communications on social media, they represent good examples of a decision to use CHV, a more “human voice” to achieve a more natural style of online communication, opposite to the “corporate voice” (Barcelos et al. 2018; Park and Cameron 2014). For example, Varusteleka is a Finnish e-retailer which has used satirical statements on Facebook when communicating their ethical values such as honesty, responsibility, and quality of the firm (Alatalo et al. 2018). Indeed, in the social media environment, darker forms of humour can be favourable. Self-defeating humour, one of the potential humour styles (see Martin et al. 2003), has proven to be one of the most effective humour styles in viral memes (Taecharungroj and Nueangjamnong 2015). For a small company, widely shared (viral) messages can raise the general awareness of the company and increase electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM), interpersonal form of communication with participants where none is presenting marketing sources (Bone 1995), and thus increase the managers’ interest in using darker styles of humour, especially on social media. Managers are facing the challenges of how they can handle different messages related to their company’s strategic human tone of voice in their communications.

At the same time, it is noteworthy that from the perspective of managing a company’s online reputation, humour, for example parody, has been discussed as an external communication threat to the reputation and creditability of the company (Veil et al. 2012), rather than describing humour as a company’s own strategic tone of voice. Especially small companies who lack high marketing budgets (Lassen et al. 2008) are struggling to attract talented personnel and differentiate themselves from their competitors (Tumasjan et al. 2011; Backhaus 2004; Lievens and Highhouse 2003). Some firms have found the solution to their recruiting challenge by utilizing the Internet as a web-based recruitment tool and are using a more human tone of voice, for example dark humour, in the Internet recruitment advertising. Using dark humour as a human tone of voice in Internet recruitment advertising might be seen as a risky choice for a small company when viewed via the earlier lenses of the uses of humour in advertising. Humour, in general, may backfire in different commercial contexts, for example, in a high-involvement setting (e.g. Fugate 1998) in which strong arguments are expected rather than humour. Furthermore, recruitment advertising is a rarely studied context within humour in the advertising literature, although some studies (Weinberger and Gulas 2019) have identified challenges and opportunities related to using humour for small companies (Oikarinen and Saraniemi 2016; Oikarinen and Söderlund 2016; Oikarinen and Sinisalo 2017), but lacking the more holistic frameworks which discuss humour from the communication perspective of a human tone of voice.

This study examines humour in a real-life context: a small company’s Internet recruitment advertising where the boundaries of controversial tone of voice—dark humour—are investigated. The goal of this study is to develop a framework of how a small company can use dark humour for communication in Internet recruitment advertising. A case study approach with an abductive logic illustrates and makes a synthesis of the different recruitment communication perspectives (sender, message, eWOM) and a dark humour tone of voice used in a small company’s Internet recruitment advertising in a holistic framework. From the perspective of the company’s online reputation management, this study aims to extend the earlier understanding of the different roles and boundaries of humour, not only seeing humour as an external communication threat to the credibility and reputation of a company (Veil et al. 2012), but more broadly as a company’s own tone of voice, which includes both controllable and uncontrollable message aspects.

Dark Humour as a Human Tone of Voice in Internet Recruitment Advertising

The preliminary theoretical framework is based on a synthesis of dark humour as a tone of voice and the three recruitment communication perspectives (sender, message, eWOM) in the context of small company’s Internet recruitment advertising. The holistic framework will illustrate dark humour as a human tone of voice in Internet recruitment advertising. First, dark humour as the manager’s tone of voice will be presented. Second, a controlled employer brand message with dark humour as a human tone of voice is defined. Third, an uncontrolled eWOM definition in Internet recruitment context will be provided.

Dark Humour as a Small Company Manager’s Tone of Voice

Individual and Social Approaches to Intentional and Personal Humour Styles

There are three widely accepted theories: incongruity, relief, and superiority on humour among business researchers (Romero and Pescodolido 2008; Morreall 2014; Meyer 2000), which Lynch (2002) calls individual-level psychological and motivational related studies, when approaching them from communication perspective. Advertising literature has utilized these three theories, which helps to provide general understanding of manager’s intentional use of humour in recruitment advertising context. In advertising, humour types can be described as combinations based on different mechanisms when perceiving something as humorous (Speck 1990). First, the incongruity resolution type of humour is frequently used in advertising (Alden et al. 1993). This contains some form of inconsistency or a surprise which demands resolution and interpretation of the message (Spotts et al. 1997). If the humour type is based only on incongruity and not requiring resolution, it may be called nonsense (Gulas and Weinberger 2006, pp. 99–101). Second, humour can be also categorized as arousal-safety humour, which can be both negative and positive in tone. When humour has a negative tone in an ad, the ad might violate social standards, norms, conventions, and taboos (Beard 2008). Another approach to negative humour types can be found in third theory, superior theories of humour, which are based on the idea that in every humorous situation, there is a winner and a loser (Gulas and Weinberger 2006). This kind of humour is also called disparagement humour, which Beard (2008) has defined as having properties in an ad such as “attacking or ridiculing something or someone, such as another advertiser, intended to make someone feel superior to someone else and to cast the victim of the attack in a negative light, including satire, a put-down, or sarcasm”. Beard (2008) has pointed out the important aspect of intentional humour as an advertiser’s intentional effort of being humorous, and it is relevant manager’s perspective also in this study and represents more tactical aspects of using humour. Next, instead of taking individual approach to humour mechanism, more social aspect of humour is acknowledged when humour is shared in social settings (Mesmer-Magnus et al. 2012).

Martin et al. (2003) presents a useful two-dimensional categorization of humour. This helps to understand the manager’s personal humour styles in this study. The first dimension defines how humour can be used in an enchanting and self-intrapsychic way, or involving one’s interpersonal relationships. The second dimension define the nature of humour as positive or negative. This classification is able to develop the widely known typology of different humour categories (self-enhancing/coping, affiliative humour as positive and self-defeating and aggressive humour styles as negative ones) (see Mesmer-Magnus et al. 2012). Aggressive humour is used to enhance the self and it is described as the tendency to express humour (e.g. racist or sexist humour) and saying impulsively funny things that are likely to alienate or hurt others. Self-defeating humour aims to enhance the relationships with others, and it refers to self-disparaging humour, for example attempting to gain the approval of others by behaving in a funny way at one’s own expense (Martin et al. 2003). Here, it is good to point out the reader that Mesmer-Magnus et al. (2012) categorize self-defeating humour as focusing on intraphysical aspects/the self and aggressive humour with a focus on ‘interpersonal/social’ aspects. This is different interpretation compared to Martin et al. (2003) and indicates the confusion among academics about understanding similar way the functions of negative humour.

Dark humour is based on a deviation from values and a transgression of social norms. It is related to sick, aggressive, or hostile humour, discussing, for example, themes such as death or disease (Mindess et al. 1985 in Aillaud and Piolat 2012). One example of a darker humour type is irony. From the psychological perspective, irony is one of the eight introduced comic styles: fun, humour, nonsense, wit, irony, satire, sarcasm, and cynicism, and thus, it can be differentiated from humour. The eight comic styles are classified either “darker” or “lighter” and irony is also one of the “darker” comic styles in addition to satire, sarcasm, and cynicism (Ruch et al. 2018; Mendiburo-Seguel and Heintz 2020). Irony, which is expressed in social interaction, has a goal to create “a mutual sense of superiority towards others by saying things differently than they mean it” (Ruch et al. 2018). Ruch et al. (2018) explain how the idea is confuse the ones who are not insiders and seek out “a knowledgeable informed insider”.

A simplified conclusion is that when the focus is shifted to the outcomes of humour, styles of humour are different when looking at the desired outcomes: bright (“laughing with”) types of humour make the target happy and laugh, while dark (“laughing at”) types of humour aim to hurt the target (Papousek et al. 2017). However, there are cases where dark types of humour does not always aim to hurt the target. For example, it has been found to be useful in critical health care situations, where nurses are able to utilize humour to convey their thinking (Kinsman Dean and Major 2008). One type of humour, which is closely related to dark humour is black humour, which is defined as “Comedy, satire, etc., that presents tragic, distressing, or morbid situations in humorous terms; humour that is ironic, cynical, or dry; gallows humour” (Oxford Dictionary). As a comprehension and preference towards black humour is positively connected to higher nonverbal and verbal intelligence (Willinger et al. 2017) dark humour in general might be an attractive way to also test a job applicant’s ability to understand the company’s atmosphere and the prevailing sense of humour. However, there seem to be inter-individual differences on the appreciation of dark humour (Aillaud and Piolat 2012), which makes it a challenging form of humour.

A Human Tone of Voice

If a small company communicates publicly by producing a humorous recruitment ad with a human tone of voice, more specifically using a darkly humorous style, it can be seen as a decision to use a “human voice” and an attempt to use a more human, close and natural style of online communication, in opposite to a typical “corporate voice” (Barcelos et al. 2018; Park and Cameron 2014). From a strategic perspective, a CHV is described as a relational maintenance strategy by Kelleher (2009) and it is defined as “an engaging and natural style of organizational communication as perceived by an organization’s publics based on interactions between individuals in the organization and individuals in publics”. Human voice is considered as natural and engaging and approaching audience with a non-persuasive manner. Corporate voice is evaluated as a more persuasive and profit-driven (van Noort and Willemsen 2011).

Goals Related to Using Humour in Internet Recruitment Advertising

There is a scarce knowledge related to the intentions of small company managers about why they would decide to use humour in general in their Internet recruitment campaigns. One of such study is Oikarinen and Sinisalo (2017), who describe the sender’s perspective and preliminary insights into manager’s intentions related to the use of humour when they identified three main objectives of architectural company’s humorous social media recruitment campaign. The first goal was to emphasize personality over skills, and the aim was to recruit a person with a good sense of humour, who would understand the humorous recruitment advertising. Thus, the intention of using humour in the advertisement was to test the person–organization fit of potential applicants (for more about the person–organization fit, read Morley 2007). Second, the goal was to differentiate themselves from other companies in architectural industry, which is dominated by conservative recruitment advertising. Third, one of the goals was to raise general awareness of the company in the public audience through increased sharing of humorous recruitment ads.

To summarize, the decision to use dark humour by a small company to generate a human tone of voice is a little understood phenomenon and therefore this study explores this unique communication phenomenon in Internet recruitment advertising. When adopting the message sender’s perspective on humour, this study makes an assumption that the dark humour that surfaced originated from the manager’s personal style of humour (see Martin et al. 2003) and involved an intentional effort to be humorous (Beard 2008). This is also linked to the goals related to using humour in recruitment advertising contexts (Oikarinen and Sinisalo 2017). Figure 1 presents the sender’s perspective on dark humour from the perspective of a small company manager’s tone of voice in Internet recruitment advertising.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Dark humour as a small company manager’s tone of voice in Internet recruitment advertising

Full size image

Employer Brand Message as Controlled Source of Employment Information

Recruitment advertising is a company-dependent source of employment information which can be directly controlled (Van Hoye and Lievens 2007). To be able to define more specifically employer brand message as controlled source of employment information, this study adopts the earlier presented framework by Oikarinen and Saraniemi (2016). They developed a framework for defining employer brand messages based on employer brand content and the communication style to understand better how a small company used humour in online job ads and thus explained humour as part of the message. The employer brand content categorization was based on an instrumental–symbolic framework (Lievens and Higghouse 2003; Nolan et al. 2013). The symbolic attributes were classified as applicants, staff, or other stakeholders, representing “human-related issues” as broader categories of symbolic attributes. Instrumental attributes were classified into companies and jobs, which represented two broad categories.

Further, the communication style element was classified either as humorous, informal or formal. In this study, the human aspect is emphasized further in two ways. First, by renaming ‘symbolic attributes’ (applicants, staff, or other stakeholders) as ‘human symbolic attributes’. Second, by classifying the communication style into two categories: a human tone of voice (characterized in general as a conversational, more human, close and natural communication style) and a corporate tone of voice (characterized in general as a more persuasive, profit-driven, and formal and impersonal communication style). As the dark humour perspective was the focus of this study, the human tone of voice was classified into three subcategories to provide information on the humour angle: humorous (dark and light humour categories) and informal non-humorous subcategories. This way, dark humour is defined as part of the human tone of voice communication style. The corporate tone of voice was classified as formal (non-humorous) and related to the humour angle. Figure 2 presents the employer brand message definition for this study.

Fig. 2
figure 2

Categorization of employer brand message (developed from Oikarinen and Saraniemi 2016)

Full size image

eWOM as an Uncontrolled Source of Employment Information

Word-of-mouth (WOM) has been defined as an interpersonal form of communication, between participants where none is presenting marketing sources. Marketing researchers have earlier approached WOM in two clearly different ways: as either input for consumer’s decision-making or as an outcome of the consumer’s purchase process (Bone 1995). Due to the Internet revolution and electronic communication channels, WOM has been expanded also to eWOM where one of the most cited definition has been “any positive or negative statement made by potential, actual, or former customers about a product or company, which is made available to a multitude of people and institutions via the Internet” (Hennig-Thurau et al. 2004, p. 39). This study adopts word of-mouth as a valuable source of employment information for job seekers (Stockman et al 2020) and utilizes the definition as an interpersonal means of communication, independent of the organization’s recruitment activities about specific jobs or about an organization as an employer (Bone 1995; Van Hoye and Lievens 2007 in Van Hoye and Lievens 2009). This study makes a preliminary theoretical synthesis of these mentioned key definitions and defines eWOM in recruitment to mean any positive or negative statement made within interaction between potential, actual, or former job seekers about specific jobs or about an organization as an employer, independent of the organization’s recruitment activities, which is made available via the Internet.

eWOM in advertising has been acknowledged as one of the emerging themes in advertising on social media as a relevant broader topic (Knoll 2015) yet the discussion has been scarce in the recruitment context and will be introduced next. The meaning of eWOM in a recruitment context has been discussed from different viewpoints (e.g. van Hoye and Lievens 2009; Stockman et al. 2020; Caudill and Diab 2020). Van Hoye and Lievens (2009) draw from the marketing literature on WOM and present three theoretical angles on how WOM can be conceptualized in recruitment. First, it can be defined as a source of employment information. Second, determinants of WOM can be seen as a source of recruitment (recipient–source framework). Third, the focus can be set by looking at the outcomes of WOM (accessibility diagnostic model). This study approaches WOM as a source of employment information for several reasons. First, the empirical data were collected from a case study setting: an online discussion forum with anonymous message recipients and comments related to humorous recruitment ad. This means that the recipient-source framework does not fit here, regardless of the possibility of identifying personal characteristics of the source, a small company’s manager and sender of humorous message. It is worth noting that the outcomes of uncontrolled WOM cannot be analysed within real-life case study settings, and thus an accessibility diagnostic model is not a valid approach for this study.

Caudill and Diab (2020) have more closely investigated the effects of certain WOM message characteristics (valence, medium and source) on organizational attraction. They showed how valence had a stronger impact on company attractiveness when the medium used was text as opposed to video. These findings will be used to justify first why the valence of WOM messages will be analysed in this study. Second, the findings will justify the relevance of decision of traditional text-based online discussion forum as empirical context for this study as their WOM-potential of producing impactful outcomes.

Stockman et al. (2020) have provided a more nuanced understanding of how negative WOM affects the decision-making process of the job applicant. Their results have emphasized that for unknown companies the negative effects of negative WOM are stronger compared to well-known companies. This adds to the justification for this study, that for small companies which have not established their reputation, negative WOM should be taken into special consideration. However, while humour in recruitment advertising has been suggested to cause negative WOM on the Internet (Oikarinen and Söderlund 2016), it can be assumed for this study, that when eWOM is initiated by dark humour, the traditional eWOM in recruitment framework can provide only a loose framework, which needs to be redefined. Therefore, it is more fruitful to take an inductive analytic approach to eWOM in this study.

Summary of the Theory

The preliminary theoretical framework makes a synthesis of three recruitment advertising perspectives and calls for empirical case study data. First perspective will be achieved through examining manager’s humour styles and intentions for dark humour (see Beard 2008) by interview data. Second perspective will be achieved through analysing controlled humorous employment information: dark humour tone of voice in the employer brand message (online job ad) (see Oikarinen and Saraniemi 2016). Third, eWOM-perspective will be achieved by analysing uncontrolled employment information generated by humorous recruitment ad (see Van Hoy and Lievens 2007).

This study suggests the links between eWOM in recruitment advertising, judgements of a potential employer (see Bone 1995) and intentions to apply. Thus, eWOM is one important nonorganizational source, which builds the employer image in addition to organizational sources, such as job advertisement (Lievens and Slaughter 2016) (which in this study is conceptualized as the employer brand message). The given feedback from the audience (potential, actual or former job seekers) and potentially other stakeholders offer managers information about the potential boundaries of using dark humour as a human tone of voice.

Methodology

The research strategy is a case study, which is an appropriate method when the researcher has little control over a phenomenon occurring in a real-life context (Stake 2005; Yin 2003). The case was selected after it was found by the research team (see Ragin and Becker 1992, pp. 9–10). The team identified different ways that small companies have used humour in their digital recruitment advertising. The nature of this single case study was explorative rather than confirmatory as it sought evidence through a single case (Perry 1998). Case studies are also a suitable approach when investigating a little-known phenomenon (Spence and Essoussi 2010).

A Case of a Small Company’s Human Tone of Voice, Dark Humour, in Internet Recruitment Advertising

A small start-up company (founded in 2006, with three employees) was operating in the Internet marketing field and needed to recruit a new suitable employee for the task of a manager’s assistant. This study’s company belongs to micro-enterprises, which are defined as ‘enterprises which employ fewer than 10 persons and whose annual turnover or annual balance sheet total does not exceed two million Euros’ (European Commission 2017). Typically, in the small companies, owner-manager’s personal role is central in the business decisions (Loecher 2000). In the recruitment, small companies have challenges compared to bigger companies to attract the talented workforce (Tumasjan et al. 2011) and most of the challenges originated due to a lack of marketing budgets (Lassen et al. 2008).

In May 2012, the manager of the company created a recruitment ad using a human tone of voice involving dark humour, and this way was able to control the employment information in the recruitment ad. Based on the manager’s interview: “…the earlier recruitment ads of the company have not probably included that much humour content in the recruitment ad, even they had also tried to communicate that working in their company will be fun”. The recruitment ad was published on the Internet, first on a public online job board. The recruitment ad with its darkly humorous content spread through social media channels (e.g. Facebook), facilitated by the company manager’s own actions. It also resulted in media visibility on the Internet, and the visibility also resulted in radio interviews with the manager. Iltasanomat (afternoon newspaper) created a discussion forum in their website, which drew comments (131 comments from April 23, 6:34 a.m. to April 24, 2:31 a.m.) and several different responses to the job ad.

In addition, the webpage also asked for a broader public audience opinion by asking anyone who visited in the webpage answer the question “Is this kind of ad good job advertisement?” They gave two options for voting: “Yes, very funny” and “No, appeared suspicious”. Total amount of given votes were 19,662. 68% of the all the given votes were ‘Yes’, and 32% of all the given votes were ‘No’. This result showed that the general public opinion was mostly positive. However, it was also possible that some people voted more than once. The administrators of the public online job board reacted to the humorous recruitment ad, initially by removing it. However, after negotiating with the manager, they republished it with modifications. Additionally, Iltasanomat reacted to the action of the online recruitment service administrators by reporting the removal of the recruitment ad, publishing a few comments of the company’s manager, and creating a new second discussion forum where the earlier discussion could continue (38 comments, April 23, 10:08 a.m. to April 24, 6:45 a.m.). Two earlier mentioned discussion forums were combined to be analysed as one dataset related to the generated eWOM for this study. The nature of these public discussion forums were that people were able to give their comments through pseudonyms. This means that it is not clear whether those 169 (131 and 38) comments were posted by 169 (131 and 38) different people.

Finally, the recruitment ad attracted about 200 job applications, which was not typical amount for this kind of small company. Six applicants were selected for interviews and after interviews the company selected and recruited one new employee. The manager stated that he was satisfied related to the outcome of the recruitment process. This at least indicates a successful case of a small company adopting a human tone of voice and using dark humour in their online recruitment advertising.

Empirical Data

The case study will empirically provide a framework for how a small company can use dark humour in Internet recruitment advertising. This is explored through a collection of versatile qualitative data and by conducting an illustrative analysis. First, the humorous style and intention of the manager sending the message were examined using an analysis of data from an interview conducted with the owner-manager of the company Second, humour was analysed as part of the controlled employment information; employer brand message (textual online job ad data). Third, uncontrolled employment information; eWOM from the online audience was analysed from online discussion forum data (see Van Hoy and Lievens 2007). As a secondary dataset, all the employees of the case company, including the recruited employee were interviewed (the manager and three employee) to understand the role of humour in general as part of the overall employer brand communication practices and as part of the recruitment process to gain a preunderstanding of the case.

Analysis Process

The analysis process of case study followed ‘abductive’ logic (Dubois and Gadde 2002). Dubois and Gadde describe the process of ‘systematic combining’, which means simultaneous working with theoretical framework, empirical fieldwork and case analysis. Abductive logic was chosen, because it was beneficial when the goal of the researcher was to discover new variables and relationships, and when the aim was theory development. During the abductive process, the original framework was modified as a result of empirical findings and theoretical insights. Next, the different phases are described next more detailed way.

In the first phase, the theoretical framework was loose, and the framework development started by focusing on understanding and analysing the discussion forum comments relatively inductively from the audience response to the humorous recruitment advertising. Then, a deeper understanding of the phenomenon underlying the case was evolved. Gradually, the case was defined in more detail focusing on the applicant attraction phase in the recruitment process and on external employer brand communication. This meant that employee interviews were not the primary datasets for analysis. During the research process, the researcher gained a deeper understanding of the different perspectives of humour the Internet recruitment advertising case, which helped significantly to develop the framework further. The framework included the sender of the humorous message, the humorous employer brand message, and eWOM elements. During the process, the importance of the human tone of voice as a communication style was also discovered by the researcher. As the theoretical framework developed, it also meant revising, adding interpretations, and restructuring the earlier conducted analysis.

There were special features related to the analysis of different datasets. Online discussion forum data was analysed first. A qualitative theme analysis (see, e.g. Braun and Clarke 2006) was conducted of online audience responses in a classification process, which was based first on the valence of online consumer discussion forum comments (during the research process, the valence construct was extended to the tone of voice). In the first step of inductive process, understanding the empirical data worked as a starting point for theoretical development (Creswell and Plano Clark 2007, p. 24). Contemporary phenomena that are tackled through case studies, typically need more inductive approaches due the lack of earlier theories (Boing 1994 in Perry 1998). The inductive approach meant that the empirical analysis was done without an exact theoretical framework of how to analyse or categorize data. The data were read carefully and categories and unifying themes were created in order to understand and illustrate the most relevant issues. The analysis unit was different in different phases of the data analysis. When analysing the valence (tone of voice) of the discussion forum comments, the analysis unit was an individual comment. When the focus turned to the content of the comments and developing themes, then the focus was the sentence level, and individual words. In this study, the researcher did not take part in the discussion but analysed discussions afterwards, thus remaining “invisible”, which some authors regard as preferable to disruptively entering a social network (see Quinton and Harridge-March 2010). Second, dark humour was analysed as part of the company-dependent, controlled employment information and employer brand message (textual online job ad data) through a general description of the recruitment ad, descriptive illustrations of the styles of humour used, and providing examples of the theoretically driven content and analysis of employer brand message. Third, sender’s style of humour and intentions for using the humour were illustrated in an analysis of the owner-manager’s interview data, following a theme-level analysis.

Findings

This section presents the findings concerning setting the boundaries of dark humour and the tone of voice used in Internet recruitment advertising. The first part of the section examines manager’s humour styles and intentions for dark humour (see Beard 2008) by interview data. The second part illustrates an analysis of controllable online job ad; dark humour tone of voice in the employer brand message (see Oikarinen and Saraniemi 2016). Third part focuses on analysis of uncontrollable eWOM generated by the humorous online job ad. During the presentation of the findings, there are some quotations from the source data to illustrate the findings.

Dark Humour as a Small Company Manager’s Human Tone of Voice

Personal Humour Styles

The manager considered the role of humour at work to be personally very important. In his view, it helped to cope with stressful and demanding work, and it was an important part of maintaining wellbeing at work. The manager described how humour works in daily situations, being an off-the-topic element in the team’s discussions, helping the team develop a healthier atmosphere and also in situations, when working seriously with customer’s cases. There seemed to be a need in the company for the ability to produce humour and to be able to make jokes. The manager explained this by saying:

Often the conversation goes to the side lines, but it cleans the atmosphere…work is taken seriously, and especially the customers’ projects are taken seriously…you have to be able to joke with others. (manager's interview)

However, inside the team, the styles of humour could take on darker forms, being possibly even aggressive. Other-targeted or self-targeted types of humour seemed to be acceptable inside their own team. However, the manager emphasized how in their team people shared a similar mindset and also understood each other’s sense of humour and joking and were not offended by humour. This way, the manager assumed, that their person–organization fit was high in their team. He explained this by saying:

There should be humour and we have difficulties sometimes, (laughing). It can sometimes be bawdy, but the group has a similar mindset and understand each other's jokes so that no one will become unhappy in any circumstances. From my side, I can say that we have a lot of fun here. (manager's interview)

Intentional Efforts to Be Humorous

The manager played an active role himself to intentionally be humorous inside the firm to maintain high spirits and to build a good atmosphere in their team. Concerning the manager’s own role as a humorous communicator, the manager did not emphasize his own role and stated that anyone in the firm could use humour equally, so it was not forbidden or limited to himself alone.

The manager also considered (self-targeted type of) humour to be an intentional and relevant part of communicating the company’s values (in this case, openness and honesty), in external communications. He explained:

To the external audience the idea is to show that it is nice to be here, for example in newspaper or radio interviews, which are related to this, so, I can joke about myself or about the company. It actually comes at the same time along with openness and honesty. It is always good to remember that when communication is made with a small twinkle in the corner of the eye, then the best result will be achieved. (manager's interview)

This also reflects using a CHV as an engaging and natural relational maintenance strategy (Kelleher 2009).

Goals Related to Using Humour in Internet Recruitment Advertising

The manager noted that the most important reason behind the humorous recruitment ad was the real need for employee and seeking the right person for the work.

This way they also aimed to find a person with a high person–organization (group) fit. An additional outcome, not the main intention, was to raise general awareness about the company. The main goal was related to the success of the recruitment process. This also shows the intention of approaching the audience with a human voice and more a non-persuasive manner compared to the corporate voice, which is typically evaluated as being more persuasive and profit-driven (van Noort and Willemsen 2011). This was explained as the manager said:

This was not part of any campaign or promotion, even it was unintentionally so, it was not the original intention, but the intention was to find the right person for the job. (manager’s interview)

This seemed to relate also to the effort to differentiate the case company from other companies. This included the idea of employee freedom, and that everybody in the company could express their true self-identity. The job content was described in the ad for the applicant, but with a humorous tone.

I do not think there are so many companies in this country, where, firstly, there is so much freedom and that everyone can be just who you are. You don’t have to be ashamed of anything here. When it comes to the job advertisement, the job content was described in the sense of what the content of the work is, albeit with a small twinkle in the eye. (manager's interview)

The manager described the main message of the ad was to communicate a fun climate and working attitude, to able to recruit an employee with similar shared values as the current team (high person–organization fit) and to able to maintain the good team atmosphere.

The general working atmosphere of the company and then the attitude … that no one needs to have a furrowed brow here, it is important for us that the employee is like-minded, like everyone else, so we can keep the atmosphere here the way it is. (manager's interview)

When considering these goals, this kind of human voice can be interpreted also to support a relational maintenance strategy (Kelleher 2009).

Employer Brand Message as Controlled Employment Information Source

The recruitment advertisement was published in a public online recruitment service. It was a short recruitment advertisement (89 words) that provided limited information about the company. The informal language indicates a promise to the applicant that there is a great atmosphere at the company and that this job is especially for those who value a relaxed atmosphere on the job. The recruitment ad contained some general conventional parts that are usually found in recruitment ads (e.g. requirements for applicants and detailed information about the job content and contact information).

Table 1 presents an illustrative content analysis of the job advertisement by utilizing an employer brand message framework and presents a description of the used humour. In summary, humour was related to instrumental job-related issues and human symbolic applicant and human symbolic staff issues, especially management. The employer brand content which was missing in this job ad were other stakeholders.

Table 1 An illustrative content analysis of the job advertisement
Full size table

The administrators of the public online recruitment service seemed to make an effort to control the content of the job ad and the brand message of the employer, which they considered an inappropriate employment information source to publish. These forbidden issues, which are not allowed as an element of the employer brand message, included inappropriate language with swearing, and thematic jokes about alcohol abuse. However, the original advertisement gained the target group’s attention on social media, and it also got the attention of the press. It seemed that controlling the spreading of the message was no longer possible. In fact, the modifications got attention from Iltasanomat (afternoon newspaper) and led to discussion in the online discussion forum opened by the Iltasanomat.

The manager pointed out, that firms in general, should use more humour in recruitment ads within the limits of appropriateness so you should not offend anyone.

The manager felt that the boundaries of using humour should be set so that it would not offend anyone, and the manager did not see their own original job ad as offensive. The expressed attitude was that one should not think about what others are thinking. He concluded that their own working practices are based on their own company values and the law. He noted:

… I don't see the announcement as offensive to anyone. It's only our company which is suffering if the announcement is inappropriate in someone's opinion, but on the other hand we don't think about whether somebody is thinking what we do is right or wrong. As I said, our behaviour is based on the company's own values and Finnish law. (manager's interview)

The manager’s view was that especially small companies should also have independence to decide their own tone of voice to support them in their efforts to recruit the right employees.

eWOM as an Uncontrolled Employment Information Source

The recruitment ad with dark humour content was published first on a public online job board. Later, it resulted in media visibility on the Internet and Iltasanomat (afternoon newspaper) created online discussion forum. In this subsection, the online discussion forum views will be organized and analysed loosely following the elements of preliminary eWOM definition in recruitment as any positive or negative statement made within interaction between potential, actual, or former job seekers about specific jobs or about an organization as an employer, independent of the organization’s recruitment activities, which is made available via the Internet. The idea of empirical analysis was to extend and modify the earlier eWOM definition in the situation when the recruitment ad including dark humour is generating eWOM (see Fig. 3). This means, that in the first phase, the comments were categorized based on the (positive or negative) valence of the responses, and more specifically, the emotionally driven tone of the voices of the individual comments.

Fig. 3
figure 3

Setting the boundaries of dark humour as a human tone of voice in Internet recruitment advertising

Full size image

The Variety in the Different Tones of Voice Concerning Employment Information

First, the identified responses were classified as positive or negative. The humour used in this recruitment ad led to both positive and negative comments. Overall amount of the comments in two discussion forums were 169. 98 Comments (58%) were positive, and 71 comments (42%) were negative. The communication style of all the comments represented also human tone of voice, which were either informal (158 comments) or humorous (11 comments). More specifically, the emotionally driven tone of voice categorizations, which aroused from the analysis of the informal comments were confused (22 comments: 7 positive and 15 negative), indifferent (35 comments: 14 positive and 21 negative) and offensive (37 comments: 7 positive and 30 negative). 64 Informal comments were uncategorized into more specific tone of voice categories. The lines between categories were not clear-cut, and there were also some responses with a humorous tone (11 comments: 11 positive). Each of the 169 comments were categorized earlier either as a positive or a negative comment. This means that there was a lack of neutral category, and it explains how 14 indifferent comments were categorized as positive comments and 21 indifferent comments were categorized as negative comments. Further, 7 offensive tone of voice comments had been classified earlier as positive comments and 30 offensive tone of voice comments were classified earlier as negative comments. The comments were regarded as positive for example in the cases where the comments indicated positive attitude towards the humorous job ad or the company, but seemed to be offended by the actions of other players (e.g. official public online employment services).

These different and scattered responses among the online audience also generally meant that the image of employer was interpreted in numerous different ways, which might also be a risk for a start-up when trying to build a consistent employer brand. Below are examples of positive comments. These comments present different individual interpretations about the job and the employer.

Excellent ad. Most probably they are searching for someone for the job with a good sense of humour whose job description keeps changing. Sounds like the kind of task one can go to start in the mornings in a cheerful mood. Is the opportunity still open? (Forum comment)

It is great that for once somebody is honest with a job ad. I am tired of all kinds of fancy words that infest these ads when the truth is that white collar work is all the same rubbish in all firms and there are similar drunks in all the firms while the secretaries must tolerate them. Nobody has the nerve to admit that in public. And they always try to hide the real situation. Refreshing! (Forum comment)

One other respondent noted: “The boys got a free promotion. But that was what they wanted. Congratulations” (Forum comment).

The higher arousal in terms of a positive tone of voice was also made visible, for example, by adding smileys and exclamation marks by writing things such as: “Totally awesome! Thank you for the good feel of the day for this company” (Forum comment) and “BU HA HA! For that job I would have sent an application already if I lived in that neighbourhood” (Forum comment).

Some of the responses were in a humorous tone of voice, in which the object of humour seemed to be towards other companies and ‘laughing at’ the convention of overly high demands expected from the applicants. The quotation below illustrates this aspect:

For once, straightforward speech. Other companies could also learn from the announcement. Usually when looking for employee in his/her late teens with 10 years of work experience and many kinds of schools finished:-) (Forum comment)

However, many of these positive comments partly reflect suspicious thoughts about the job. Readers were perhaps a bit confused about the message and its credibility. Below is the first comment in the discussion forum as an example of a positive confused tone of voice.

At least the humourless will drop out already at the application stage and the ad will get attention. The job may really be very nice and relaxed. Of course, it is possible that the job is terrible for real, but I do not believe that such a workplace would be capable of that kind of self-irony. (Forum comment)

Sometimes the confused tones of voice were also more negative. Below is an example of a negative confused tone of voice from the perspective of a potential applicant. Suspicious thoughts were related to the employment information broadly. This shows clearly the risks of using humour in a recruitment ad. When the message is not considered to be credible, it can lower also the overall trust in the company.

Could be just a joke for a promotion. Myself, I would not go to work for the firm because it appears to be somehow neglectful. The payment of wages could also be little so and so. Apparently, some dude has drafted this ad and gives the firm such an image that nobody actually works there. And hardly any wages are paid. (Forum comment)

There were also indifferent tones of voice that pointed out in a dismissive way that the ad was not interesting, surprising, or did not create any emotional arousal. Some people had a need for rationalization and wanted to provide explanations for the use of humour in the job advertisement and wrote things such as: “It is so strange” (Forum comment) or “With a small thing, this company has optimized its visibility” (Forum comment) and “What is the deal? For getting support employed, i.e. for a worker for free the employee must ‘open’ a vacancy” (Forum comment).

As people are different, some people expressed very negative emotional responses in their comments. Below is an offensive tone of voice comment, which express a negative emotional response towards the company and its business practices.

In that kind of company hardly anything is managed in a business-like way, including the payment of wages, official expenses, working time records and work safety. Hopefully the labour authorities will intervene with this stupid ad and remove it. No responsible person should be forced to work in such a moronic company. An irresponsible person can freely take the risk by all means. No success stories will be built with that attitude, only bubbles. (Forum comment)

It is good to mention again here that some offensive tone of voice comments were regarded as positive. There were comments, which indicated positive attitude towards the humorous job ad or the company, but they seemed to be offended by the actions of other players (e.g. official public online employment services).

The Different Tone of Voices of Potential Employee and Potential Customer

Whereas job seekers as potential employees are the main target group for recruitment advertising, it was notable that it was possible to identify from these comments both the voices of job seekers, and potential customers. When taking a more detailed look at the tones of voice adopted by job seekers, there were either positive voices of potential and actual applicants, conditional voices of potential applicants, or uninterested non-applicants.

The positive tones of voice of potential and actual applicants were expressed by making a comparison of the job to the poor image of telephone sales jobs or comparing the ad to other firm’s conventional phrasing of recruitment ads. Two such examples included: “I’ll apply right away. It beats fair and square telemarketing jobs, for example, where you have to lie eight hours per day to survive” (Forum comment) and “I submitted the application. To say the least, it was a more interesting announcement than using conventional phrases such as looking for a youthful worker for a dynamic team,’…” (Forum comment).

Especially notable within the job seeker’s positive comments were the conditional potential applicant voice: “I would apply if I would live in the city…” (Forum comment) “…if I were younger” (Forum comment) or “…if the salary were good” (Forum comment). It was also possible to identify such voices in the comments, who clearly stated that they are not interested about the offered job. Such comments represented uninterested non-applicant voice: “I am not interested making coffee and bosses with hangover …” (Forum comment). These different voices might mean, that for the job seeker, the description of a purely good, relaxed atmosphere might not alone be enough to make the final decision of applying for the job.

Beyond the job seekers as the key target group, it was also possible to identify an individual comment expressing the potential customer voice, where the important question of trust again came up. Although the commenter, who represented the potential customer perspective, recognized the successful marketing intentions of the employer, he or she still did not consider the firm to be a reliable business partner. This might demonstrate the widely accepted convention that business communications in general should follow a rather formal socially acceptable structure to be trusted. The identified voices of potential customers indicated also the extended effects of recruitment advertising beyond the key target group. Naturally, potential customers’ responses are also meaningful to a company as well as the potential employees’ responses when constructing employer image. The quotation below illustrates this aspect.

It is needless to say that the publicity is searched with the ad and seemingly they have been succeeded. Surely the other thing is that what kind of publicity is achieved. The ad would not at least increase my confidence for the company in question as a potential customer. And yes, I have a good sense of humour, but yet I do not consider a company that respond to things in that way as a reliable partner. These comments from a perspective of a potential customer who sees the ad as the job seekers do. (Forum comment)

Employment Information Content About the Job or Organization as an Employer and Beyond

In the preliminary definition of eWOM in recruitment, it was considered to able to give information about specific jobs or organization as an employer. When looking at the employment information content of the comments, the main observation was that the ad was powerful in creating very different kinds of associations. Indeed, the audience’s comments covered broadly employment information ranging from the specific assistant job, employer and company. In addition, it created associations for example related to the manager. Beyond these company-related aspects, the comments dealt also with industry, Finnish companies, Finnish public employment, and business services. It is possible to regard this kind of broader influence, which was not intentional as an unintended advertising effect (see Dahlén and Rosengren 2016).

When comparing the negative and positive tones of voice, it was found that whereas the positive tones of voice were targeted mainly towards the ad and the employer’s properties or action, the negative tones of voices seemed to have more scattered associations beyond the company-related employment information. For example, the industry itself seemed to have a poor reputation. Negative associations were also expressed towards Finnish companies and even persons with an academic education. This kind of negative spillover effect seems to be also in line with the earlier notion by Oikarinen and Sinisalo (2017), who suggested how respondents who had given negative feedback about humorous recruitment ads seemed to deduce more negative meanings from the ad potentially seeking more precise rationalization compared to those who have given positive feedback on the ads.

Empirical Findings: A Summary

Figure 3 makes a synthesis of empirical findings and describes the process of how the boundaries of dark humour as a human tone of voice in Internet recruitment advertising is formed.

Discussion

Theoretical Implications

The goal of this study was to develop a framework of how a small company can use dark humour for communication in Internet recruitment advertising. This study answers this question by developing the framework, which is presented in Fig. 3. The framework is novel, and it will offer several contributions, which will be introduced next.

First, as a general contribution, this study contributes to the discussion of the boundaries of a human tone of voice, as is it has been traditional wisdom among practitioners that brands should adopt a more human tone of voice when operating on social media (Lund and Sutton 2014 via Barcelos et al. 2018). This study acknowledges also critical studies which offer different perspectives on how a human tone of voice is not necessarily the company’s best decision in all business communication situations (Barcelos et al. 2018; Crijns et al. 2017) and continues this important discussion within the specific situation of using dark humour in Internet recruitment advertising.

The developed framework on ‘Setting the boundaries of dark humour as a human tone of voice in Internet recruitment advertising’ is able to visualize how the human tone of voice (using dark humour) originates from a manager’s personal style of humour and intentional effort, supporting a relational maintenance strategy and how this is connected to recruitment advertising goals. It also shows how a human tone of voice is part of the employer brand message and employment information. Further, the new definition of eWOM as an uncontrolled source of employment information emphasizes the role of the positively and negatively valenced varieties of human tones of voice instead of positively or negatively valenced statements. Beyond the observed voices in eWOM, there were also external stakeholders (official public online employment services, the digital press) who also set boundaries on the use of dark humour and the tone of voice of the manager by influencing the employer brand message and eWOM.

Second contribution was to participate in an emerging eWOM discussion on recruitment in general (e.g. Stockman et al. 2020; Caudill and Diab 2020). This study provides an extension of the definition of eWOM in recruitment as an uncontrolled employment information source and generated by using a human tone of voice (see Fig. 3 the proposed definition). There were several differences compared to earlier definitions. First, this study does not only talk about valence, but more nuanced tones of voice. Second, it acknowledges, that interaction is targeted more broadly to stakeholder groups. Third, it acknowledges the existence of extended employer information content. This provides a more nuanced understanding of the possibilities to describe the dynamic interaction behind eWOM, which seems to go beyond purely interpersonal communication, independent of the organization’s recruitment activities about specific jobs or about an organization as an employer (Bone 1995; Van Hoye and Lievens 2007 in Van Hoye and Lievens 2009).

Finally, within humour in advertising literature this study makes several intended contributions. Most of the studies in the stream of humour in advertising have approached humour narrowly, from the perspective being either ‘use of humour’, ‘responses to humour’ or ‘moderator effects of humour’ (Eisend 2018). This study argues that earlier studies are limited as they are dominated by quantitative studies (Crawford and Gregory 2015) and neglecting the possibility to combine many perspectives together in one study, which has been done in this study to provide a more holistic framework. One meaningful element identified in the framework was eWOM which was further identified as an uncontrolled employment information source (uncontrollable responses to the use of dark humour). Thus, it provides an interesting angle on humour in advertising studies. So far, eWOM has not yet been recognized as a relevant topic in the humour in advertising discussions (see Eisend 2009, 2011).

Lastly, this study continues also recently noticed niche for studies on the use of humour in recruitment advertising (Weinberger and Gulas 2019), which has identified some challenges and opportunities related to the use of humour for small companies (Oikarinen and Saraniemi 2016; Oikarinen and Söderlund 2016; Oikarinen and Sinisalo 2017). Compared to earlier studies, this study is able to provide more holistic picture through a theoretical synthesis of the different recruitment communication perspectives (sender, message, eWOM) and a dark humour as a human tone of voice in a small company’s Internet recruitment advertising.

Managerial Implications

By providing a holistic framework, this study has extended the earlier understanding of the boundaries of humour by challenging the traditional view of online reputation management, not only seeing humour as an external communication threat to a credible company’s reputation (Veil et al. 2012) but viewing it in a more holistic way. The use of a human tone of voice by a company can be seen as a relational strategy, which includes (in this specific case) the manager’s own tone of voice, and aspects of both controllable and uncontrollable employment information in recruitment advertising. How small companies can use dark humour and how they should decide whether to use it or not are discussed next.

Dark humour as one form of a human tone of voice, offers opportunities for the small firms, because they lack large marketing budgets (Lassen et al. 2008) and they struggle to attract talented personnel and differentiate themselves from their competitors (Tumasjan et al. 2011; Backhaus 2004; Lievens and Highhouse 2003). Humour has the potential to differentiate the company for the applicant pool or potential business partners and attract those who have similar values when it comes to understanding and valuing humour. It is good to highlight for the managers the importance of the person–organization fit, which is basically about value congruency (Morley 2007) when thinking about decision of whether or not using dark humour in Internet recruitment advertising. Likewise in this case, the current employees should share the similar mindset and darker in-group humour should be accepted by all in the team. Then, it is also good to have authentic idea about how the main message of the ad is to communicate a fun climate and working attitude, to able to recruit an employee with similar shared values as the current team (high person–organization fit) to able to maintain the good team atmosphere in the company. Manager’s own tone of voice creates background for the question whether or not to use darker humour. Managerial recommendation is that if humour is not authentic, honest part of communication culture inside the organization and natural part of manager’s communication with external stakeholders, humour should not be used in Internet recruitment advertising.

What information is important for managers is to understand that major of the discussion forum comments, the uncontrollable eWOM, at least in this case (58%) were positive and 42% were negative. The general public opinion asked in the webpage seemed to be clearly more positive towards this kind of recruitment ad (68% positive and 32% negative). Despite the higher number of positive comments in general, managers should be aware that it was not certain whether discussion forum comments were posted by different people. For example, although unlikely, is it possible that the same person posted both positive and negative comments about the job ad. Further, it is possible that some people voted more than once in the webpage. Therefore, the question still is, how much potential risks the manager and company is able to manage?

Managers can take some additional learning points from this case. First learning point is about the importance of the successful dialogue between external stakeholders who are involved in the Internet recruitment campaign. Beyond the observed voices (e.g. job applicants, potential customers) in eWOM, there were also external stakeholders (official public online employment services, the digital press) who also set boundaries on the use of dark humour and the tone of voice of the manager by influencing the employer brand message and eWOM. For example, in this case, it was important to understand the resistance of public online service administrators towards using humour, but at the same time being aware that different stakeholders have different roles when they participate in setting the acceptable limits for human tones of voice. For example, here the digital press seemed to have a positive attitude towards the use of a darkly humorous tone of voice in recruitment advertising.

Other managerial learning point from this case is related to empirical findings which showed that an employer’s brand message involving the use of a dark humorous tone of voice created eWOM with several different explanations for company’s persuasive tactics. Multiple online audience voices: job seekers and potential business customer were also identified, which showed extended brand communication effects in the online environment. Negative extended employment information content expressed by some of the audience also indicated the potential risk of creating a negative employer image by using the sort of humour explored in this paper. From the recruitment perspective, negative eWOM is worth taking seriously for companies without an earlier reputation as it have been shown in recent research how negative WOM can influence applicant attraction negatively especially in the case when job seekers have little earlier knowledge of an organization (Stockman et al 2020).

Limitations and Further Research

Causal links are not possible to differentiate in a holistic world (Hudson and Ozanne 1988), and case studies take a more subjective approach and try to understand context-dependent phenomenon rather than seeking causal links and generalizations (Wahyuni 2012). The overall framework explained in this study could be developed further by collecting empirical research evidence from comparative case studies. Additionally, experimental approaches could be designed and conducted by utilizing the framework and testing the effectiveness of specific types of human tone of voice for the different audiences.

There were limitations related to data collected through the discussion forums. They are considered as limited due to the unobtrusive and anonymous nature of the online medium, where people can alter their social representations and true opinions (Lorenzon and Russell 2012; Kozinets 2002). In the future studies, data collection for exploring eWOM as an uncontrolled employment information could be done from multiple other closed and open social media communities. Moreover, the analysis related to the discussion forum comments was loosely based on qualitative theme analysis (e.g. Braun and Clarke 2006) with the idea of extending and modifying the earlier eWOM definition in the situation when the recruitment ad including dark humour is generating eWOM. Future studies related to definition of eWOM in recruitment would benefit also from more systematic content analysis approach (see Kassarijan 1977; Hsieh and Shannon 2005).

Over the years, humour as a one human tone of voice has changed from being more playful to becoming more aggressive in style which follows socio-cultural changes (Weinberger et al. 2015). Naturally, this change is visible in the small company manager’s recruitment communication studied in this paper. After all, while the cultural digital revolution in branding has evolved, instead of talking about brand management, we should talk more about managing risks (see Fournier and Avery 2011). Therefore, owing to the lack of literature related to possible risks to an employer brand arising from the use of humour, this study hopefully encourages more research on this important topic.

In the future studies, the question of how to use human tone of voice in contrast to corporate voice could be applied into recruitment settings consisting of virtual agents, instead of humans, as humanness of virtual agent in general has positive implications on customers in service encounters (Söderlund and Oikarinen 2021). It is good to note that dark humour represents only one element of a human tone of voice and thus, further research is needed to cover different other aspects of human tones of voice in digital recruitment communications.