Winning battles with a joke: a qualitative inquiry of humour in the Indian Army

Title

Winning battles with a joke: a qualitative inquiry of humour in the Indian Army

Creator

Sumagna B.; Vijaya R.

Description

Humour in military organizations can be antithetical given the rigid hierarchy, high degrees of work formalization, and obedience to hierarchy. This paper explores how humour is initiated, propagated and maintained in the Indian Army. We conducted twelve in-depth interviews with retired army professionals and used Braun and Clarkes (2006) thematic analysis to capture the study's main findings. Three major themes emerged organizational humour, leader humour, and team humour. We found humour is essential in combating stress, increasing social cohesion, facilitating newcomer assimilation, and promoting a positive work environment. We also found evidence of subversive humour used in forms of resistance to challenge the hierarchical structure subtly. We have provided a three-part schema of workplace humour which sheds interesting insights on workplace humour. Our findings will contribute to understanding how military humour helps to maneuver challenges of a stressful work situation 2023,European Journal of Humour Research. All Rights Reserved.

Source

European Journal of Humour Research, Vol-11, No. 1, pp. 27-45.

Date

2023-01-01

Publisher

Cracow Tertium Society for the Promotion of Language Studies

Subject

armed forces; leader humour; organizational humour; team humour

Coverage

Sumagna B., Somaiya Vidyavihar University, India; Vijaya R., Christ University, India

Rights

Restricted Access

Relation

ISSN: 2307700X

Format

Online

Language

English

Type

Article

Identifier

https://doi.org/10.7592/EJHR2023.11.1.755

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