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PurposeThe purpose of this study is to explore the role of “overtime norms” as a mediator between performance-driven work climates and employee burnout. This study also examines in-role performance and work engagement as moderators between high-performance climates and burnout.Design/methodology/approachA snowball sample of 214 full-time working adults from the United States participated via an online survey. Data were analyzed using SmartPLS and conditional process analysis.FindingsResults from conditional process analyses suggest (1) performance-driven climates are positively related to burnout, (2) overtime norms mediate the relationship between performance-driven climates and burnout, and (3) in-role performance and work engagement moderate that relationship such that highly competent and engaged employees are less prone to stress and burnout.Practical implicationsThese results highlight the dangers of performance-driven work climates on employee well-being. Trends toward extended work hours which can be exacerbated by technological advancements inevitably come at a cost. Managers and organizations should be careful not to prioritize work life over non-work life.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the literature by identifying overtime norms as a mediator in the performance-driven work climate–burnout relationship. This study also identifies in-role performance and work engagement as resources that can reduce burnout.

Purpose This paper aims to study the effects of widespread stress and uncertainty that is characteristic of organizational crises on service employees and to explore the extent to which organizations may proactively use supervisors’ positive humor and discretionary organizational support that goes above and beyond service employee expectations to mitigate the pandemic’s negative impact on work engagement. Design/methodology/approach Cross-sequential survey-based data was collected from 172 service employees during the height of the pandemic to assess service employees’ perceptions of both their supervisors’ use of positive humor and their employers’ discretionary organizational support in response to the emotion-laden stress and uncertainty surrounding COVID-19. PROCESS analysis was used to test the hypotheses and to conduct supplementary analyses. Findings Results suggest employee perceptions of supervisors’ use of positive humor positively impact dimensions of work engagement at Time 1. This engagement then positively impacts extra-role behavior, innovativeness and pride at Time 2. The impact from supervisor humor to the outcomes is fully mediated through work engagement. From a moderation perspective, discretionary organizational support was shown as a substitute for creating work engagement at low levels of supervisor humor suggesting that the two “resource builders” can act as substitutes in creating engagement. Originality/value This paper provides unique insights into both the valuable role of positive workplace humor for service workers’ work engagement during times of widespread crisis and the moderating role discretionary organizational support plays when perceptions of humor are relatively low. Moreover, the supplemental examination of the multidimensional work engagement construct as a mediator between humor and the service outcomes of extra-role behavior, innovativeness and organizational pride provides unique insights into how a crisis context may deferentially affect the experience and implications of engagement for other service worker outcomes. Understanding the proactive, ameliorative role in service effectiveness played by supervisor humor and discretionary organizational support during crises is an emerging question for service research.

PurposeThe unprecedented dynamics of the COVID-19 pandemic has forced firms to re-envision the customer experience and find new ways to ensure positive service encounters. This context has underscored the reality that drivers of customer delight in a “traditional” context are not the same in a crisis context. While research has tended to identify hedonic need fulfillment as key to customer well-being and, ultimately, to invoking customer delight, the majority of studies were conducted in inherently positive contexts, which may limit generalizability to more challenging contexts. Through the combined lens of transformative service research (TSR) and psychological theory on hedonic and eudaimonic human needs, we evaluate the extent to which need fulfillment is the root of customer well-being and that meeting well-being needs ultimately promotes delight. We argue that in crisis contexts, the salience of needs shifts from hedonic to eudaimonic and the extent to which service experiences fulfill eudaimonic needs determines the experience and meaning of delight.Design/methodology/approachUtilizing the critical incident technique, this research surveyed 240 respondents who were asked to explain in detail a time they experienced customer delight during the COVID-19 pandemic. We analyzed their responses according to whether these incidents reflected the salience of hedonic versus eudaimonic need fulfillment.FindingsThe results support the notion that the salience of eudaimonic needs become more pronounced during times of crisis and that service providers are more likely to elicit perceptions of delight when they leverage meeting eudaimonic needs over the hedonic needs that are typically emphasized in traditional service encounters.Originality/valueWe discuss the implications of these findings for integrating the TSR and customer delight literatures to better understand how service experiences that meet salient needs produce customer well-being and delight. Ultimately, we find customer delight can benefit well-being across individual, collective and societal levels.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine how employees’ perceptions of their supervisor’s use of four types of humour relate to employee job satisfaction, organisational pride, organisational commitment and self-esteem. Supervisor favourability is also examined as a mediating variable in these relationships. Design/methodology/approach An online survey of 216 working individuals provided data on the effect of supervisor use of humour on employee attitudes. Findings Perceptions of positive forms of humour (affiliative and self-enhancing) positively related to employee various attitudes, while aggressive humour was negatively associated with those attitudes. Results also support the intervening role of supervisor favourability in the relationship between supervisors’ positive use of humour and employees’ job satisfaction, affective commitment and organisational pride. Research limitations/implications Studies of the effects of workplace humour can benefit from using more fine-grained operationalisation of positive and negative humour. Research can also benefit from considerations of intervening mechanisms to the humour–work outcome relationship. Practical implications The results underscore the benefits of affiliative and self-enhancing humour on employee attitudes in the workplace. While negative humour can have an undesirable effect, there may be circumstances under which self-defeating humour is not negatively received. Originality/value This paper fulfils an identified need to better understand supervisors’ use of different, more discriminating forms of humour on employee attitudes.

Purpose Team cognition is known to be an important predictor of team process and performance. DeChurch and Mesmer-Magnus (2010) reported the results of an extensive meta-analytic examination into the role of team cognition in team process and performance, and documented the unique contribution of team cognition to these outcomes while controlling for the motivational dynamics of the team. Research on team cognition has exploded since the publication of DeChurch and Mesmer-Magnus’ meta-analysis, which raises the question: to what extent do the effect sizes reported in their 2010 meta-analysis still hold with the inclusion of newly published research? The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology/approach The authors updated DeChurch and Mesmer-Magnus’ meta-analytic database with newly published studies, nearly doubling its size, and reran their original analyses examining the role of team cognition in team process and performance. Findings Overall, results show consistent effects for team cognition in team process and performance. However, whereas originally compilational cognition was more strongly related to both team process and team performance than was compositional cognition, in the updated database, compilational cognition is more strongly related to team process and compositional cognition is more strongly related to team performance. Originality/value Meta-analyses are only as generalizable as the databases they are comprised of. Periodic updates are necessary to incorporate newly published studies and confirm that prior findings still hold. This study confirms that the findings of DeChurch and Mesmer-Magnus’ (2010) team cognition meta-analysis continue to generalize to today’s teams.

PurposeThe benefits of humor for general well‐being have long been touted. Past empirical research has suggested that some of these benefits also exist in the work domain. However, there is little shared understanding as to the role of humor in the workplace. The purpose of this paper is to address two main gaps in the humor literature. First, the authors summarize several challenges researchers face in defining and operationalizing humor, and offer an integrative conceptualization which may be used to consolidate and interpret seemingly disparate research streams. Second, meta‐analysis is used to explore the possibility that positive humor is associated with: employee health (e.g. burnout, health) and work‐related outcomes (e.g. performance, job satisfaction, withdrawal); with perceived supervisor/leader effectiveness (e.g. perceived leader performance, follower approval); and may mitigate the deleterious effects of workplace stress on employee burnout.Design/methodology/approachThe authors examine the results of prior research using meta‐analysis (k=49, n=8,532) in order to explore humor's potential role in organizational and employee effectiveness.FindingsResults suggest employee humor is associated with enhanced work performance, satisfaction, workgroup cohesion, health, and coping effectiveness, as well as decreased burnout, stress, and work withdrawal. Supervisor use of humor is associated with enhanced subordinate work performance, satisfaction, perception of supervisor performance, satisfaction with supervisor, and workgroup cohesion, as well as reduced work withdrawal.Research limitations/implicationsProfitable avenues for future research include: clarifying the humor construct and determining how current humor scales tap this construct; exploring the role of negative forms of humor, as they likely have different workplace effects; the role of humor by coworkers; a number of potential moderators of the humor relationships, including type of humor, job level and industry type; and personality correlates of humor use and appreciation.Practical implicationsThe authors recommend caution be exercised when attempting to cultivate humor in the workplace, as this may raise legal concerns (e.g. derogatory or sexist humor), but efforts aimed at encouraging self‐directed/coping humor may have the potential to innocuously buffer negative effects of workplace stress.Originality/valueAlthough psychologists have long recognized the value of humor for general well‐being, organizational scholars have devoted comparatively little research to exploring benefits of workplace humor. Results underscore benefits of humor for work outcomes, encourage future research, and offer managerial insights on the value of creating a workplace context supportive of positive forms of humor.