No Laughing Matter: Workplace Bullying, Humor Orientation, and Leadership Styles

Workplace bullying is associated with a host of negative outcomes for the worker who is the target of bullying, as well as for the organization where the bullying occurs. Moreover, we know that rates of bullying are particularly high in health care settings; however, we are less familiar with the factors that may reduce workplace bullying in hospitals. Thus, this study was conducted to determine whether the humor orientation styles of individuals, including nurses working in hospitals, as well as their managers' leadership styles, can influence perceptions of bullying in the workplace. Using data from 459 workers employed in a large hospital in the Southern United States, we examined associations between the Multidimensional Sense of Humor Scale, which has four dimensions, as well as the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire, with three leadership substyles, and their associations with the risk of being bullied. We observed that one of the four humor subscales, Humor Appreciation, did affect perceptions of bullying in the workplace. The other three, Humor Recognition, Humor Production, and Humor for Coping, did not. However, the leadership styles of managers did affect reports of negative acts. In fact, transformational leadership was associated with 22% of the variance in reports of decreased bullying activity. This work is consistent with previous work on the importance of leadership styles for creating positive work environments, particularly in hospital settings. Given these findings, we offer suggestions for leaders to further improve nursing communication.