'Having Fun'? : Humour as Resistance in Brazil.

Highlighting the under-researched interrelationship between workplace humour and resistance, this paper examines employee opposition in a Brazilian telecommunications company. Much of the literature on corporate culture and humour has emphasized the way that `having fun' can facilitate production. Functionalist in perspective, such studies treat organizational joking both as a means by which employees can `let off steam' and as a flexible tool for managers in reinforcing corporate culture. Questioning the universality of this `safety-valve' theory of humour, our empirical analysis suggests that humour may be a relatively effective means of expressing employee dissatisfaction especially where more overt forms of resistance might provoke managerial reprisals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]