Abstract
In the present study, we examined the impact of humor’s positive functions on the perception of a job’s meaningfulness. We argued that liberating and stress-relieving humor act as job resources enhancing job crafting to increase social and structural resources to experience meaningfulness. We hypothesized that crafting the job to increase structural and social resources would mediate the link between organizational humor functions (i.e., liberating and stress-relieving) and meaningfulness. We conducted a cross-sectional study among 200 Turkish employees from different occupations. Our results revealed that increasing structural resources mediated the relationship between liberating humor and meaningfulness, while this mediation was partially for stress-relieving humor. The mediating role of increasing social resources was partial and conditional for both types of organizational humor functions. The practical and theoretical implications have been discussed from a positive organizational scholarship perspective.
About the authors
Neslihan Turnalar-Çetinkaya is lecturing in the Department of Psychology at MEF University. Her main areas of research are positive organizational scholarship and positive entrepreneurship. She also provides consultancy services to organizations at different scales.
İrem N. Keskin is a fresh master student of Master of Psychology: Theory and Research at KU Leuven. She graduated from MEF University with a double major degree in psychology and law in 2021. She is currently working as a research intern at Ghent University.
Gamze Bora is a content intern at Meditopia. She supports the Content team by editing content before it goes live in the app and doing research about the field of meditation and mindfulness. She graduated from MEF University in 2020.
Reyhan İkan is a UX Researcher at Kariyer.net. She researches different user personas’ behaviors, attitudes, emotions, and as a whole, their experiences while using interfaces. She graduated from MEF University in 2020.
Şeyma Gümrükçü is a content intern at Meditopia. She supports the Content team by editing content before it goes live in the app and doing research about the field of meditation and mindfulness. She graduated from MEF University in 2020.
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