Workplace Humor

The international success of the television show The Office and the lasting and far-reaching success of the cartoon strip Dilbert both demonstrate that though the workplace is often a serious and formal place, it can also be a productive site for humor. When we chuckle at the lampooning of modern “office speak” in The Office, or when we cut out a Dilbert cartoon on the absurdity of office bureaucracy and post it on our cubicle wall, we are acknowledging the humor on some level fits our own organizational experiences. Scholarship of organizational humor often looks beyond humor made about the modern workplace and focuses more on jokes and humor made within the workplaces. Humor scholarship focuses on the everyday use of humor in organizational settings ...