Marc Hye-Knudsen - 2nd year PhD presentation

Supervisors: Christian Waldstrøm & Dan Mønster
Discussants: Jacob Arnoldi & Birte Asmuß

Abstract
What are the functions of organizational humor? The qualitative literature reveals four distinct functions humor may be used for in the workplace: coping, affiliation, subversion, and correction. Each of these positive uses has a corresponding negative counterpart: aggression, dismissal, conformism, and submission. We introduce the Functional Humor Questionnaire (FHQ), a psychometric scale measuring these eight distinct uses of humor, developed and validated through three studies employing exploratory factor analysis (N = 250), confirmatory factor analysis (N = 250), and establishing test-retest reliability as well as discriminant and predictive validity (N = 200). Building on these three studies, a fourth study validated a group-level version of the scale across 43 Danish work teams (total N = 257). We demonstrate that each of the eight uses of humor represents a psychometrically distinct construct and is associated with unique individual and group-level outcomes.

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