Some offices are funnier than others, a characteristic that
may be determined by the organisational structure.

In some workplaces, people laugh a lot more than in others and it is all to do with organisational culture. Dr Barbara Plester has just completed her PhD on how organisational culture influences humour in the workplace with a thesis titled Laugh out Loud.

“The benefits of laughter are now well recognised. Laughter provides release and relieves boredom and can make being at work more fun. Employers are now seeing value in their workplaces being more fun,” says Dr Plester.

To explore the influence of organisational culture on how humour occurs at work, she did interviews and observations at four companies in different industries – a legal firm, an information technology firm, a financial institution and an energy provider.

She found that boundaries to humour-related activity were influenced by the organisational culture and by levels of formality or informality. Humour was more enabled and encouraged in the less formal cultures and more constrained in the more formal work settings, she says.

“When people go to work in new cultures they pretty quickly pick up on what the boundaries are from one workplace to another – what sort of jokes would or wouldn’t be acceptable.

“But people within organisations perceive that humour and organisational culture have both positive and negative impacts upon workplace outcomes such as retention, satisfaction, performance and recruitment.

“Humour at work is widespread and a significant component of modern working life. Humour manifests itself within workplace culture and understanding the influence of organisational culture on humour enactment is an important facet of organisational studies”.