p.i

“Laughter, a famous Irishman once said, ‘is wine for the soul.’ Imbibe this book forthwith. You’ll clap. You’ll cheer. You’ll smile. You’ll stagger. You’ll feel better about business life. You’ll remember its lessons for ever. Probably.”

—Prof. Stephen Brown, Ulster University

“Humor is pervasive in a multitude of situations, and business settings are no different. Buying, selling, and promoting are just a few of the commercial domains where the positivity of humor comes into its own. This original book explores the role of humor in a wide range of marketable dealings and from an extensive variety of perspectives. From psychology to media studies and from marketing to linguistics, contributors are leading international experts from diverse academic fields thus rendering the collection both interdisciplinary and well and truly global, too.”

—Prof. Delia Chiaro, University of Bologna and President of the International Society of Humor Studies 2015–17

“The editors have brought together leading scholars from a variety of disciplines who work in academic and applied settings to produce the most comprehensive volume of cutting-edge, up-to-date research on the social functions of humor in organizational settings. This book is an important resource that tops the list of ‘must reads’ for basic and applied researchers, and students of humor and organizational psychology. This well-written volume demonstrates that humor can be a double-edged sword within an organization, showing that an organization’s humor climate can be either positive or negative, having beneficial or detrimental effects on organizational culture by affecting the psychological well-being and performance of individual employees and by affecting the quality of interactions among workers, as well as the function of the organization as a whole. In addition to looking within an organization, this volume addresses the ways that companies use humor in marketing and advertising to relate to and engage the general public.”

—Dr. Thomas E. Ford, Western Carolina University and Editor of Humor – International Journal of Humor Research