“The joke merely affords opportunity for realizing that an accepted pattern has no necessity. Its excitement lies in the suggestion that any particular ordering of experience may be arbitrary and subjective. It is frivolous in that it produces no real alternative, only an exhilarating sense of freedom from form in general.”
-Mary Douglas, anthropologist
Like small talk, humor is embedded in people’s everyday lives at work. Humor can be used as a means of coping and providing relief to the absurdities of bureaucracy, management or even work itself. It is also a mechanism in which new individuals get socialized into an organization where ‘getting the joke’ is a sign. Examining humor specific to an organization or group (that differs from ‘universal’ humor) can help us shine a light into its unique culture. Let us humor ourselves to study the relationship between humor and organizational culture.
We can understand organizational culture using Edgar Schein’s model that posits three fundamental levels in which culture manifests itself: (a) observable artifacts, (b) values, and (c) basic underlying assumptions. On the highest level, artifacts of culture are what we can directly see and feel when entering an organization such as office space, symbols, dress codes, etc. In the middle, are espoused values of culture, formally documented within organizational vision, values and mission and informally expressed in what people say why they do (informed by interviews). The most fundamental aspect of culture is the collective, taken-for-granted, underlying assumptions, norms, beliefs and feelings that drive behaviors (informed by deep questioning and participant-observation). Understanding the underlying assumptions of the people in an organization is essential to come out with insights into organizational culture and transformation. This is often done by examining the connections between the perceptions of different aspects of culture. For example, an organization may claim to value ‘innovation’ but does not practice ‘openness’ (a value that supports innovation) because of underlying assumptions behind the proper distribution of power and information. As anthropologist Margaret Mead states,
“What people say, what people do, and what they say they do are entirely different things.”
Explaining these gaps and contradictions can reveal insights into how specific organizational culture (or sub-cultures) works. It is also worth noting that larger organizations, especially ones with units operating in silos are bound to contain several sub-groups and sub-cultures.
Humor permeates at all three levels of culture. It is expressed in the form of jokes, gestures, emails and ‘funny’ posters in the office space. These visible ‘artifacts’ serve units of analysis but by themselves do not reveal the code of a culture, e.g. the collective meaning of symbols within the group. This implies that one who does not understand an ‘inside-joke’ is an outsider who does not belong in the culture. Like the process of uncovering insights, we must examine organization/group-specific humor at a deeper level. What makes a joke ‘funny’, in all its subjectivity, can be derived by the (usually contradictory) relationship between espoused values and shared, underlying assumptions. According to the incongruity theory of humor, humor is perceived at the realization of incongruity between a concept (espoused values) and the real objects (actual values and underlying assumptions) thought to be in some relation to the concept. Workplace jokes can then be seen to reveal gaps between management and staff, strategy/vision and implementation; what is said and what is done. Deciphering a joke would require going beyond words to take the social context, environment and workplace interactions into consideration.
Humor does not just reflect but actively shapes the taken-for-granted truths and norms in a culture. Jokes made between different ranks of staff establishes and reproduces the assumptions underlying the organizational hierarchy (or lack of). This means that humor can be used in both to maintain the status quo as well as to challenge current moral and social boundaries. In some way, humor is derived from the ‘danger’ (jokes that ‘cross the line’ or ‘go too far’) involved in flirting with these boundaries. In doing so, employees through humor subvert, clarify and shape the cultural boundaries and taboos that define organizational behavioral norms. Take an example of my colleague who enjoys granting nicknames to other team members, a behavior that was influenced by another bubbly senior affiliate. An intern (‘top talent’) in return gave him a humorous nickname (‘Howard’, this is an inside joke) that has since stuck in the office, reflecting and setting certain assumptions of fairness and fun; assumptions that would not hold true if ‘top talent’ and ‘Howard’ were seen to have ‘crossed the line’.
Internalizing organizational-specific humor and behavioral boundaries/norms is a sign of one’s socialization into a group and culture. ‘Getting the joke’ is an informal requirement for group onboarding and membership unless one is being deliberately excluded. These points are especially important for an ethnographic researcher whose goal goes ‘inside’ to understand people from their point of view, an aspect of which is their sense of humor. Understanding where these boundaries lie and how people negotiate these boundaries shed light on the intangible ethos of an organization.
The application of examining humor as an index of organizational culture is boundless, from looking at transformation (propagating culture change) to mergers and acquisitions (bringing two cultures together). Looking at organizational-specific humor provides us with an additional analytical tool to dig deeper to provide ‘thicker’ insights into the workings of organizational culture.
Tell us what do you think!
References:
1) Douglas, Mary. “The social control of cognition: some factors in joke perception.” Man 3.3 (1968): 361-376.
2) Hogan, Suellen J., and Leonard V. Coote. “Organizational culture, innovation, and performance: A test of Schein’s model.” Journal of Business Research 67.8 (2014): 1609-1621.
3) Plester, Barbara. Laugh out loud: How organizational culture influences workplace humour. Diss. Massey University, 2007.
4) Schein, Edgar H. Organizational culture. Vol. 45. No. 2. American Psychological Association, 1990.
5) Sen, Anindya. “Humour analysis and qualitative research.” Social Research Update 63 (2012): 1.
Cartoons:
1) Fishburne, Tom. Marketoonist. https://marketoonist.com/
