Where humor prevails, entrepreneurship never ends: the role of leader’s positive humor on employee intrapreneurship

Purpose In the increasingly competitive market, employee intrapreneurship characterized by innovation, has become an important path for enterprises to acquire core competitiveness. Based on the social identity theory, the purpose of this paper was to empirically analyze the mechanism and boundary conditions of the relationship between leader’s positive humor and employee intrapreneurship. Design/methodology/approach Based on the social identity theory, a questionnaire survey of 310 innovation workers of information service enterprises in Zhejiang Province of China was used to test the moderated mediation model. The authors used SPSS and AMOS to further verify the research model through structural equation modeling and multiple regression analysis. Findings The results showed that leader’s positive humor positively promoted employee intrapreneurship, and perceived insider status played a partial mediating role between them. Affect-based trust and leader encouragement of creativity positively moderated the relationship between leader’s positive humor and perceived insider status, perceived insider status and employee intrapreneurship, respectively. Furthermore, affect-based trust and leader encouragement of creativity also moderated the mediating role of perceived insider status. Originality/value This study further deepens the influencing factors and mechanism of employee intrapreneurship, helps to provide a theoretical basis for organizations to effectively guide employees to carry out intrapreneurship.