Leader humor and employee creativity: an empirical study based on the perspective of binary stress

Purpose This study examines the impact of leader humor on employee creativity by focusing on the mediating role of work stress and the moderating role of employee resilience. Design/methodology/approach This study used three-wave data from 230 employee–leader dyads and tested the hypotheses using hierarchical regression and bootstrapping. Findings Results revealed that leader affiliative humor enhanced employee creativity through increasing challenge stress. On the contrary, leader aggressive humor reduced employee creativity through increasing hindrance stress. Employee resilience moderated the indirect effect of leader humor on employee creativity via work stress. Practical implications Leaders are encouraged to master and use affiliative humor to increase employee creativity. Simultaneously, organizations should establish appropriate employee development programs to improve employee resilience. Originality/value Based on the cognitive appraisal theory of stress , this study confirms the mediating role of work stress in the relationship between leader humor and employee creativity. This study expands the research on the impact of leader humor on employees and its relationship with employee creativity.