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4.3   Laughing out loud

How humor shapes innovation processes within and across organizations

Marcel Bogers, Alexander Brem, Trine Heinemann, and Elena Tavella

Introduction

Innovation processes increasingly rely on the collaboration between different stakeholders across various boundaries, including functional, hierarchical and organizational boundaries.¹ Such boundary-crossing collaborations rely on different mechanisms, activities and boundary objects. In this paper, we explore the role of one such mechanism, namely humor, which consists of a humorous stimulus and reaction,² in collaborative innovation processes. Humor might shape those processes as it affects the social positions of and relationships between individuals. The occurrence of humor, smiling and laughter is generally considered as having a positive influence on interactions, as it, for instance, promotes creativity, intelligence, social skills, psychological health, and conflict resolution.³

During the innovation process, small incremental actions are taken that cumulatively serve to shape the future of a product, process or service.⁴ In this case study, we consider the role played by the individual in the micro-management of a collaborative innovation process. Specifically, we use conversation analysis to identify how proposals for future actions are designed and received in the context of an innovation workshop and what role humor plays in such proposals. By adopting a micro-level perspective on interactions and through conversation analysis, we explore how humorous expressions, smiling and laughter are employed by different participants engaged in collaborative innovation processes. Specifically, we identify how proposals for future actions are designed, received and accepted in the context of three innovation workshops and what role humor plays. Additionally, we explore which roles different workshop participants play—by employing humorous expressions, smiling and laughter—in the micro-management of the collaborative innovation process.

Our study shows how humor is employed at the micro-level of collaborative innovation processes. Based on data from workshops in which participants worked together to construct new business models for a particular company, our study reveals that humor (humorous expressions and laughter) may be an important condition for the acceptance of proposals at the interactional micro-level of innovation processes. A particular finding is that company-internal representatives’ use of humor differs from company-external participants in terms of their orientation to having different rights and responsibilities in the innovation process. Moreover, we show that workshop participants orient to the shaping of proposals for future action as a joint task, rather than as something that can or should be done unilaterally by one participant. Thus, though proposals for future action can in principle be formulated and designed in a variety of ways, participants largely rely on a very specific pattern of proposing and accepting future actions, a pattern in which humorous expressions and laughter play a significant role. However, slight variations in terms of which participant makes a proposal, who produces humorous expressions, and who smiles and laughs reveal that different participants embrace different social positions during the workshops. Those positions vary depending on who has equal, primary and secondary rights to shape the innovation process.

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Background

Corporate innovation management and its related processes can be seen as a main trigger for successful innovation activities for which management scholars propose a set of tools that often relate to the efficiency of these activities.⁵ However, innovation must also be seen as a social and communicative process that requires the participation and collaboration of interdisciplinary teams to achieve success.⁶ It is only through diversity among team members that participants can “overcome possible blind spots”⁷ and create more and different insights,⁸ allowing for a more comprehensive analysis of the problem at hand.⁹ In this view, innovation becomes a social construction, shaped and negotiated through an “evolving pattern of interaction between people that emerges in the local interaction of those people with its fundamental aspects of communication, power, and ideology and evaluative choices.”¹⁰ Individual social positions held by participants and the normative expectations associated with those positions¹¹ can influence the overall organization of the innovation process, as well as the potential outcome.

Scholars interested in exploring the micro-interactions occurring during social and communicative processes have increasingly paid attention to the emergence and effects of emotions. Strategy scholars, for instance, have recently investigated the emotional dynamics emerging during strategic conversations. Liu and Maitlis¹² have analyzed how members of top management teams display emotions, as well as the relationship between the emotional display and the way they propose, discuss, and evaluate strategic issues, and make or postpone related decisions. Cornelissen et al.¹³ explored how commitment to sense-making frames emerges and escalates under pressure during communication, emotional turmoil, and use of materials. Håkonsson et al.¹⁴ examine how past performance and emotions dynamically influence and are influenced by group decisions to adopt and implement new routines, as well as the effect of performance and emotions on group decisions.

Similarly, and more specifically, research on humor, smiling, and laughter has gained presence in the literature with studies covering a wide range of disciplines. Scholars have, for instance, identified that humor can be used to creatively build, nurture, and contest workplace relationships, as well as enhance collaborative creative thinking and behaviors at work.¹⁵ Maemura and Horita¹⁶ investigated the role of humor in conflict resolution through negotiations, in particular, whether humor and laughter affect the structure, content, and process of negotiations. This study has shown that the occurrence of humor can enhance cohesion, cooperation, and the ability to tackle difficult situations, as well as reduce tensions. Besides, humor and laughter help structure the exchanged arguments, as well as pose new arguments and break out of deadlocks, thereby altering the content and process of negotiations. Humorous expressions and laughter have also been found to enhance negotiation processes and the achievement of goals, as well as to strengthen interpersonal relationships.¹⁷

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Employing humor and proposing future actions constitute two interactional activities that each in different ways encompass the social positions held by individuals, as well as the relationship between them. Hatch¹⁸ argues that cultural and emotional contexts of contradictions, namely, the complexity of “open social construction processes,” are constructed through humorous discourse. Moreover, even though laughing together may be a way to reduce power distance, asymmetrical use of humor in organizations reveals the local constraints and obligations of individuals,¹⁹ where hierarchical and organizational positions and relevancies can be “laughed into being.”²⁰

These same relevancies can play a role when participants propose future actions in the context of organizations. Asmuss and Oshima²¹ thus demonstrate how institutionally defined positions such as being the CEO or the HR manager are made relevant through the way in which the participants negotiate proposal sequences, so that “institutional roles are local achievements and are subject to continuous renegotiation throughout interaction” (p. 83). Similarly, Stevanovic and Peräkylä²² argue that authority, that is, “the exercise of power that the subject of authority understands as legitimate” (p. 297), is exercised and recognized through interaction. Landgrebe and Heinemann²³ illustrate that knowledge and authority are intertwined, so that participants “in the know” have the authority to determine future joint actions.

Method and data

In this case study, we consider how the individual’s social position and the normative expectations associated with this position emerge through the local interaction of participants within an innovation process, specifically by investigating humor and its relation to the proposal for future action. For this purpose, we use conversation analysis, an ethno-methodological approach that focuses on how members interpret each other’s actions and display that interpretation moment by moment.²⁴

Our analysis draws on video-recordings of three workshops carried out by a research center in collaboration with a national industry network for middle- and top-managers from various companies in Denmark. The workshops aimed at helping one of the involved companies, here referred to as Lightoman, create a tangible business model²⁵ for new markets. The workshop participants—three representatives of Lightoman and several network members from other companies—were tasked with collaboratively developing proposals for future business models. Due to the innovative, future-oriented and collaborative nature of the workshops they can be viewed as processes of innovation.

Following the principal method of “unmotivated looking”²⁶ which is usually employed in conversation analysis, a first analysis of the video-records identified a noticeable pattern: humorous expressions, smiling and laughter were almost exclusively employed within one particular type of workshop activity, namely, when a participant was making what we here term a “proposal for future action.” Those proposals typically followed a particular sequenced pattern of interaction: (i) a participant identifies an object for representing a particular stakeholder in the value network being constructed, and (ii) other participants either accept or reject this proposal. This pattern is illustrated with a representative excerpt from the data in the next section (Table 4.3.1).

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Findings

The pattern of proposals for future action

In the case of Lightoman, the pattern of making proposals for future action emerged through the following steps:

As an illustration of this process, the excerpt below in Table 4.3.1 provides a transcript of an actual proposal sequence that follows the pattern described above. It starts by participants B and C (lines 01–04) identifying the need for a particular stakeholder, in this case a bank, to be included in the value network. Next, one of the participants finds and grabs an object, sometimes verbally proposing to use that object for the representation of a stakeholder. In other instances, as illustrated in this excerpt, the participant makes the proposal non-verbally, by holding up the object for inspection by the others. In line 8, B does this with the silvery ball he has selected and picked up in line 08. B’s labeling of the ball (and hence the bank) with the humorous expression “slippery” (line 09) and the other participants’ reactions to this in the form of laughter, smiling, etc. (in lines 12–16) are other constitutive features of the proposals for future action as found in this excerpt.

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The effect of humor on proposal design, receipt, and acceptance

Operationalizing humor as a “laughable,”²⁷ that is, as actions that participants themselves treat as funny through smiling, laughing or in other ways indicating the humorous nature of the proposal, our data reveals that humor is a constitutive feature of proposals for future actions in the cases we investigated. Based on these initial observations, we subsequently collected all proposal sequences in the data and coded these with respect to how the proposals were designed as humorous or not, whether they were treated by recipients as humorous or not and whether the proposals were accepted or not. A total of 38 proposals across the three workshops were found. The overall results are illustrated in Table 4.3.2.

The three main columns represent, firstly, the total number of proposals that we identified in our analysis (the above-mentioned 38), secondly the number of those proposals that we identified as being received as humorous by one or more recipients, and thirdly those (of the total 38 proposals) that were accepted by the receiver as identified through the follow-up action. The rows then indicate, for each of these categories, how many proposals were designed or intended to be humorous (with different types of indications given in parentheses), how many were transformed to be humorous by another participant, and how many proposals were not designed to be humorous.

As Table 4.3.2 illustrates, the use of humorous expressions accompanied by smiling and laughing constitute proposals for future actions in this particular context, as it is employed in 31 out of 38 proposal sequences. Our findings do not, however, suggest a direct correlation between whether a proposal is humorous or not and whether the proposal is ultimately accepted, since non-humorous proposals are at least just as likely to be accepted as their humorous equivalents. Given that humor does not appear to be a prerequisite for having a proposal accepted, what other role may it serve in proposal sequence? In order to investigate this, we looked in more detail at the way in which different participants in the workshops made use of humor in relation to the proposals. Most notably, the three representative members of Lightoman, for whom the business models were being built, behave in ways that deviate from the other participants, who were network partners from other companies. In one workshop, for instance, a Lightoman representative member refrained entirely from participating in the construction of the business models, and instead preferred to merely take notes of the other participants’ contributions. The other two representative members of Lightoman, each engaging in their respective workshop group, participated more actively in the construction of the business models, making their own proposals, selecting objects for representing stakeholders, producing humorous expressions and laughing. But even when engaging in the construction of the business models, Lightoman representative members and other network partners behaved differently, specifically, in terms of how they marked proposals as humorous and pushed for and joined laughter. Those behavioral differences are outlined next.

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Marking a proposal as humorous

As illustrated in the excerpt above, in the case of Lightoman, proposals were treated as humorous by the participants, either through smiling and laughter, or by accompanying the proposal with a humorous expression (e.g., a bank is represented by a “slippery” ball, as in Table 4.3.1). What we here labeled as humorous expressions were typically statements of a pun-like quality, where the physical property of an object was used to ascribe a cognitive or behavioral property to the stakeholder the object was proposed to represent. Figure 4.3.1 presents a selection of these puns, taken from our data, as they were produced by the participants in the workshops.

Though such puns were regularly produced as part of the proposal sequence, we find a striking difference between participants with respect to who did or did not produce puns in response to another participant’s proposal. In particular, Lightoman representatives were the only participants who would produce puns to accompany other participants’ proposals, either when such a pun had not been made by the proposer, or to replace a pun produced by the proposer. At the same time, other participants only produced a pun to accompany their own proposals.

Puns and other humorous expressions that accompany proposals function as a type of account, in serving to imply and explicate why and how a particular object should represent a certain stakeholder. In the excerpt above (Table 4.3.1), for instance, the pun-like expression “slippery” serves to articulate why the ball is a good representation of a bank, since many might consider banks “slippery.” Producing a pun is thus a way of creating meaning, by establishing a direct relationship between the selected object and the stakeholder it is proposed to represent. When producing a pun on behalf of other participants’ proposals, Lightoman representative members thus support the others’ proposal by making sense of it.

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At the same time, the production of a pun on behalf of others also constitutes a claim of independent recognition of the relationship between object and stakeholder, something which is particularly apparent when a pun is produced to replace or correct another pun already provided by the producer of the proposal. Through producing puns on behalf of other participants’ proposals or replacing other participants’ puns, Lightoman representative members thus seem to orient to or demonstrate their special social status as being someone who is ultimately responsible both for making sure that other participants’ proposals are accepted and that they are accepted in the right way, that is, as appropriate sense-making proposals.

Pushing for laughter

As illustrated in the above description of the steps in making proposals, a requirement for a successful proposal is that others have received it with laughter. Laughter can thus be seen as the participants’ orientation that the proposal sequences are generally derived through joint accomplishments. When laughter by others is not produced, most participants simply abandon their proposal, looking either for a new object or suggesting another stakeholder. The Lightoman representative members, however, did not abandon their proposals when these were not responded to with laughter by others. Instead, they pursued laughter or other types of acceptance/evaluation of their proposal until it was finally accepted and the object could be placed on the table.

Since laughter and acceptance of the proposal are overall connected, the Lightoman representatives’ pursuit of laughter and hence acceptance thus becomes a way of invoking a certain social status in which an individual has the right and authority to insist on and pursue acceptance at a point where this has otherwise not been produced.

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Joining the laughter

Though Lightoman representative members clearly orient to the importance of laughter when making their own proposals or constructing puns for others’ proposals (as recipients), they laugh considerably less than other participants. Notably, they do not laugh even in contexts where participants make clear that their contributions are designed to receive laughter, not just in general, but specifically from a Lightoman representative.

In the case studied, laughter appears to be a constitutive feature of proposal sequences and something that is required to make the proposal come about as a joint social construction, rather than a unilateral decision. In not joining the general laughter and not laughing when clearly selected as the recipient of a humorous proposal, Lightoman representative members can thus be seen to exclude themselves from the more general participation framework, assigning themselves a different role than that of the other participants, that is, as someone who is not jointly responsible for establishing consensus, as the others are.

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Discussion and implications

In this study, we find that proposal sequences are constituted by participants treating the proposals as humorous and joint constructions on which acceptance by other participants is contingent.²⁸ Though there is a constitutive pattern for these sequences, small variations in the participants’ behavior reveal attributes of the kinds of roles and responsibilities they assign themselves and each other.²⁹ We thus conclude that humor (humorous expressions, smiling and laughter) may be an important condition for the acceptance of proposals at the interactional micro-level of innovation processes. These findings contribute to our understanding of the relationship between humor and innovation. Moreover, linking these findings to the literature aids a further elaboration of these concepts and their relation, and more generally provides a basis for discussing the implications for both research and practice.

A particular finding is that humor plays a particular role in inter-organizational relationships. Our analysis shows that internal representatives from Lightoman behave differently from other participants, who are external contributors, in relation to the construction and use of humor in proposal sequences, and the acceptance of proposals. In doing so, the fact of a contributor being an internal versus external stakeholder effectively acts as a moderating variable that affects the relationship between humor and the acceptance of proposals, as illustrated in Figure 4.3.2. In particular, internal contributors assign themselves particular roles within the workshop more generally and within the decision-making sequences (proposing future actions) more specifically. As such, they act as someone who is not responsible for making the future actions a joint action, as the others are, but rather as someone who is ultimately responsible for (and able to determine whether) the proposal is “just right.”

While humor appears to play an important role in the cross-fertilization of knowledge across organizational boundaries, it would be useful for future research to explore whether and how the type of boundary matters, and what the impact would be on different types of performance.³⁰ In particular, it would be useful to investigate how humor affects the obtaining and integration of external knowledge³¹ and also how such an effect may differ for various stakeholders in the value network,³² especially considering the role internal versus external stakeholders adopt in the generation and use of humor. Our findings could then also contribute to the emerging interest in individual-level attributes, such as behavior and cognition in the literature on open innovation, which has been conceptualized as knowledge flows across organizational boundaries.³³ On this basis, we would propose a contingency view of such openness and the use of humor, although our results would initially support the assumption that the occurrence of humor is generally considered as having a positive influence on interactions.³⁴

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Considering the contribution of this chapter, our findings highlight some conditions that are important when “managing” humor. Previous research in the area of management and organization has identified humor as a managerial tool, with both positive and negative elements.³⁵ Humor has, for instance, been found to support people in unpacking the nature and substance of paradoxical conflicts they might face in carrying out particular organizational tasks, thereby helping them to respond to those conflicts. Interactional micro-practices that involve humorous expressions thus potentially influence how actors perform tasks as they have implications for their actions and how paradoxical conflicts are addressed at different organizational levels.³⁶ Our study then illustrates how humor may be used as a managerial tool for the micro-management of interactional processes between individuals. Moreover, given that suppression and manufacturing of humor are two overlapping managerial control strategies, in which humor can be linked to “power relations and management control through joking relations,”³⁷ further exploration is required to identify how such strategies relate to individual social positions and rights of the interacting participants.³⁸ Other perspectives, such as psychology, may also add to a more complete understanding of the attributes and types of humor.³⁹ Researchers who are active in this domain may build on our initial findings and further develop the specific framework and propositions that are implied in these findings. For example, our study links to various related concepts and theoretical perspectives that call for a more integrative perspective on managing humor. More generally, we hope that the findings offer a basis for a better understanding and further investigation of the enabling and/or constraining role of humor in collaborative innovation processes.

Our results also have some important implications for managers. Based on our results, we found two types of behaviors that influence the perception of innovation in companies. The first one is the use of laughter as acceptance. Supporting a positive sentence about a new product or service, accompanied with laughter, creates a positive response. This is perceived as support for the idea, and also for the person who elaborates on it. The second type is the one which is less obvious. Through a deliberate denial of laughter, the introduced idea might lack the needed support to proceed within the innovation process. A common way to express such a positive or negative attitude is the use of a pun. Such a pun can create meaning as well as independent relationships between the involved objects and stakeholders. Apparently, this is highly dependent on the innovation culture in the company on the one hand, and also on the overall cultural background of the company’s employees on the other hand. Indeed, earlier studies show distinctive differences of innovation behavior in Europe and countries such as India or China.⁴⁰ Hence, these factors have to be considered in applying humor in corporate contexts. Otherwise, activities and their implications might have a different effect from the one that was intended. Finally, it is worthwhile mentioning that humor in general has a positive effect on innovation in companies. Company leaders should consider allowing and fostering humor in their organizations, even though the industry norm would indicate that this is not serious enough.

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