Workplace Control

Direct Worker Control

The idea of using humor for any kind of control is usually traced to the early superiority theories of Aristotle and Thomas Hobbes. For example, Richard

Stephenson argues that sarcasm, caricature, or parody can be used to ridicule deviant behavior and thus discourage people from repeating it. Humor can be used to tease people who violate social or other norms and encourage them to get back in line. Using humor this way in the workplace might be called direct workplace control. This is different from the more indirect method of using humor to vent resistance so that it does not become dangerous.

In an article based on her 1957 doctoral thesis in cultural anthropology, Pamela Bradney described the efforts of clerks in a London department store to tease trainees who demonstrated deviant behaviors. In this way, they brought new employees in line with the norms and expectations of the workplace. Since then, similar work has shown that humor can be used to gently correct the behaviors of those in machine shops and restaurant kitchens.

Another way that humor is used to control people is by the cultural rules about who is authorized to joke with whom. Anthropologist Alfred Radcliffe-Brown (1881–1955) has written that we can learn about levels of authority and respect by noting who jokes with whom. In a recent era, it was de rigueur for male comedians to make fun of their mothers-in-law, for example. Studies of this phenomenon have shown how mental health workers show deference to psychiatrists and similar power relationships. For a managers, though, this presents an opportunity to demonstrate respect (or lack thereof) through their willingness to joke with or about others.

Of course, this sort of chiding humor can be a diversionary tactic to hide aggressive messages that would be unacceptable if expressed directly. When this happens, the attempt at worker control often backfires. The manager who is seen as backbiting gains neither power nor respect. Also, there is a very different way to use humor in support of the organization and its goals.

...