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'Having Fun'?: Humour as Resistance in BrazilUniversidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil, Judge Institute of Management, University of Cambridge U.K.
Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, Coventry, U.K. Highlighting the under-researched interrelationship between workplace humour and resistance, this paper examines employee opposition in a Brazilian telecommunications company. Much of the literature on corporate culture and humour has emphasized the way that 'having fun' can facilitate production. Functionalist in perspective, such studies treat organizational joking both as a means by which employees can 'let off steam' and as a flexible tool for man agers in reinforcing corporate culture. Questioning the universality of this 'safety-valve' theory of humour, our empirical analysis suggests that humour may be a relatively effective means of expressing employee dissatisfaction especially where more overt forms of resistance might provoke managerial reprisals.
Key Words: Descriptors: humour • resistance • safety-valve theory • satire • cartoons • animal metaphors
Organization Studies, Vol. 16, No. 5,
739-768 (1995) This article has been cited by other articles:
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