Humor at work plays a crucial role in shaping organizational culture, contrary to its often trivial perception. Through two ethnographic studies—a year-long observation of a hotel kitchen and a three-year study of a private boarding school—the book explores how organizational interactions create and sustain structures over time. It emphasizes a communication-focused approach to understanding the complexities of workplace dynamics and contributions to the structuration process. This insightful analysis is aimed at students and researchers in management, sociology, and communication studies.
This book encourages us to take humor at work seriously. Although humor is usually associated with trivial or non-serious banter; it is a significant factor in the construction of organizational culture. This book provides an experience based organizational account of how organizations are produced and reproduced, as well as how organizational interaction is coupled with structure (organizational rules and resources). It is based on two ethnographic studies: the first, a year-long study of a hotel kitchen, and the second, a three-year study of a private boarding school. This long term examination of an organization’s interaction is used to illustrate how organizational interaction produces the duality of organizational structuration over time. An ethnographic communication-focused approach provides methods for recognizing multiple sites and levels of the structuration process. As a result, this approach provides a major contribution to understanding the process of structuration through agents’ actions in the context of their organizational culture. This book will appeal to those interested in the nuance and complexity of workplace interaction; specifically it is addressed to students and researchers in management, sociology, organizational and communication studies.
