Author(s)

Jia Gu, Nan Huang, Shujin Li1

Corresponding Author

Jia Gu

ABSTRACT

While positive humor and its intriguing effect have attracted great attention from researchers, researches on aggressive humor seem to be largely ignored. This paper proposes a model based on resource theory and attribution theories to examine the influence and mechanism of supervisors’ aggressive humor on employee engagement. Data is collected from the online survey platform (http://www.wjx.cn) and includes 162 Chinese respondents. The results showed that aggressive humor in the workplace could diminish the job engagement of employees and emotional exhaustion played a mediation role in the process. Furthermore, the moderating effect of injury motivation on the relationship between aggressive humor and job engagement via emotional exhaustion was also examined in this research. This study offers both practical implications and theoretical contribution to the researches related to aggressive humor, emotional exhaustion, injury motivation, and job engagement.

KEYWORDS

Aggressive humor, job engagement, work motivation, emotional exhaustion, injury motivation