Workplace Resistance

In the last 30 years, organizational scholars have systematically studied workplace humor to understand its role within organizational settings. Workplace humor has been studied from a variety of practical and theoretical perspectives, and it is clearly documented that humor functions as a form of workplace resistance. Workers use jokes and other forms of humorous interaction to resist managerial power and control and to create and maintain some amount of dignity in the workplace, whereas managers in a variety of white- and blue-collar industries use humor to resist unwanted stereotypes of particular occupations. Understanding how and why humor functions as workplace resistance is an essential element in any comprehensive work on humor, especially since most people will work for an organization at some point in their ...