Humor in leadership and employee creative and innovative behavior

This paper is a review of existing studies on the relationship between humor in leadership and employee creativity, voice behavior, and innovative behavior. First, a meta-analytic review of zero-order correlations shows a medium-sized correlation between leader humor and creative/innovative behavior of employees. Secondly, the review shows that two distinct mediating mechanisms - a relational mechanism and a motivational, resource-based mechanism - might explain the correlation between leader humor and creative/innovative behavior. Existing studies thirdly show that moderator variables are relevant, but that the choice of variables does not yet allow for an overall picture. Unfortunately, the existing studies did widely neglect the incremental contribution of leader humor beyond other leadership constructs. The review ends with implications to guide future research on humor in leadership.