Leading with Laughter? Exploring Humor Styles and Their Impact on Director Engagement in Dutch Water Authority Boards
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2025-06-23
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en
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Humor is a understudied aspect of communication in formal organizational settings such as boardrooms. While previous research has highlighted the benefits of humor in team dynamics and middle management, little is known about its role at the highest levels of decision-making. This study examines how affiliative and aggressive humor used by board chairs influences director engagement during meetings of Dutch water authorities. Using a quantitative analysis of twenty-five recorded meetings across two organizations, instances of affiliative and aggressive humor were manually coded. Director engagement was measured as the number of unique speakers per agenda item. Hierarchical regression models revealed that affiliative humor significantly increased engagement, supporting the first hypothesis. In contrast, aggressive humor did not reduce engagement and showed a weak positive association in some models, suggesting that it may be interpreted differently in formal contexts. These findings contribute to boardroom literature by identifying humor as a relational leadership behavior and extend humor research to high-stakes, structured environments. Practically, the results indicate that affiliative humor can be an effective tool for board chairs to foster open dialogue and enhance participation in decision-making processes.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen