Body Joking

C H A P T E R

6 Body Joking: The Aesthetics and Creativity of Organizational Humor Barbara Plester, Brigid Carroll, and Heesun Kim University of Auckland Business School, Management and International Business, Auckland, New Zealand

INTRODUCTION While humor has been researched in relation to a vast range of topics and from multiple perspectives, organizational humor analyses still have a largely rational, functionalist and cognitive bent. This chapter explores one way to step well away from such a predominant focus by highlighting the role of the body and through that evoking more of an aesthetic and sensory understanding of organizational humor. We propose that humor has highly creative dimensions that frequently involve bodily experiences that in turn invoke different senses. Such bodily dimensions are not commonly analyzed and often even ignored in traditional organizational studies that prioritize the cognitive and rational aspects of organizational life (Shilling & Mellor, 1996; Tangenberg & Kemp, 2002; Waskul & Vannini, 2006; Williams & Bendelow, 1998). Based on a rich range of empirical workplace interactions, this chapter will explore humor using organizational aesthetics (Strati, 1999, 2000) to develop an appreciation of the creative, aesthetic aspects embedded in humor and analyzed through a sensory approach. The experience of organization can be a creative process including play, fun, and physical aspects of social life not necessarily explored through regular, conventional organizational analyses. An aesthetic approach

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allows us to capture the idiosyncratic aspects of humor and thus engage with organizational understandings that are beyond orthodox analyses (Linstead & Ho¨pfl, 2000). According to Strati, both the comic and the grotesque are aesthetic categories that offer different analytical paths for organizational research. Our wider dataset includes many comic (and even some grotesque) interactions encompassing practical jokes and spontaneous humor involving falling, tasting unexpected substances, experiencing unusual and confronting smells, sights and sounds, and a variety of verbal banter that is sharp, quick, and often clever. From this cornucopia of sensory humor experiences, we have selected three representational interactions to analyze and subsequently emphasize the creative, aesthetic elements and implications of workplace humor. Therefore, with our focus on a range of physical and cerebral joking, this chapter seeks to embrace the sensory wisdom that offers an alternative way of knowing and understanding the rich social milieu of organizational life that is highly creative in its aesthetic qualities.

CREATIVITY IN ORGANIZATIONS Creativity generically is defined as “the ability to produce original and unusual ideas, or to make something new and imaginative” (Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary, 2017). We propose that such a definition includes intangible, cognitive forms of creativity such as a joke or quip. The concept of creativity is commonly understood as having two key elements which are (1) novelty and (2) appropriateness to the task or problem that is being addressed (Kaufman & Baer, 2012). This means the defining attributes of creativity are “originality and usefulness” (Mayer, 1999, p. 450). Kaufman and Beghetto (2009) distinguish between forms of creativity in terms of “Big-C creativity” (2009, p. 1, emphasis in original) that involves large eminent activities of “creative genius” with outcomes that may be enduring, “little-c” creativity enacted by “ordinary” people and what they term “mini-c” creativity (2009, 1 2 emphases in original) which highlights intrapersonal and developmental creativity. Finally they make one further distinction to account for workplace creativity or in their words “professional creativity or Pro-c” (2009, p. 2) that may have significance in workplace analyses. The key point is that while we can view creativity as a prominent activity conducted by “mavericks,” we can just as easily view it as situated in everyday incremental activities. Kaufman and Beghetto’s categories offer a framework with which to analyze creativity using “appropriate specificity” (2009, p. 10) for both large creative endeavors and small incremental activities that occur every day and specifically for this chapter in routine workplace contexts.

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Creativity has been cited as “the most important economic resource of the 21st century” (Florida 2002, in Kaufman & Beghetto, 2009; 1), which makes creativity a financial, imperative activity. Creativity in business is often articulated as “thinking outside the box” meant to result in innovative or different approaches to a particular task (Business Dictionary.com, 2017) and the ability to solve problems. Creativity is recognized as a key management asset; hence, business approaches to creativity tend towards a transactional nature, suggesting that creativity is primarily useful to devise new products and services, to offer new business solutions, and to offer benefits to organizations— often profit-focused benefits. Bilton and Cummings (2014) caution against viewing creativity as merely production focused and instead advocate viewing creativity as a “broad social process” (2014, p. xv) that links key areas of enterprise and organizational life. What is not always recognized or promoted in organizational business contexts is the art of being creative or the importance of allowing creativity to flourish by including creative activities, mind-sets, and interactions. Idea work, essential to organizational growth and development, is generated by a suite of different qualities and features including “liberating laughter” (Carlsen, Clegg, & Gjersvik, 2012, p. 12). We will, therefore, explore the idea that humor is part of a suite of actions that can be creative, and we propose that creativity may be fostered and encouraged through joking practices. Playful energy and humor opens up the dynamic of people, situations and ideas (Carlsen et al., 2012, p. 10). According to Critchley, joking is a “meaningful practice” (2002, p. 3) that “lets us see the familiar defamilarized, the ordinary made extraordinary, and the real rendered surreal” (2002, p. 8). Humor produces a novel actuality that changes our view of the world by inverting social practices, and joking is a game with its own rules that can upset some of our everyday rules and practices (Critchley, 2002). In other words, humor and joking are creative practices that can construct novel ideas and scenarios and humor is an everyday creative form that can stimulate self-expression in social and working interactions (Ivcevic, 2007). A fun culture where humor is encouraged fosters original ideas (Ziv, 1983), and workplaces where intellectual creativity is coupled with frequent humor are more energetic and allow joint construction between contributors (Holmes, 2007). Therefore although humor at work may not explicitly create new products or services, it can add value to social interactions by freeing thought processes and workplace strictures (Cooper, 2008), inverting ideas and protocols, and thus may generate an environment where creativity and innovation prevail. The creative practice of joking may drive further creative impulses, interactions, and ideas and may involve people in embodied actions and sensory perceptions as joking may contain both cerebral and

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corporeal elements. It is this sensory approach that captures our attention as so often humor is highly sensory, yet corporeality is not readily acknowledged in humor studies nor does it often feature in discussions of organizational creativity where cognitive approaches to creative ideas and interactions are often prioritized.

A SENSORY VIEW OF ORGANIZATIONAL ENVIRONMENTS Arising from European philosophy, aesthetic approaches to organizational analysis focus on tacit knowledge and sensory perceptions (Linstead & Ho¨pfl, 2000). Antonio Strati (1999) is credited with introducing organizational aesthetics and claims that an aesthetic approach incorporates people’s ability to see, hear, touch, smell, and feel organizational phenomena. Sensory wisdom differs from cognitive, rationalized knowledge and is antithetical to the more commonly adopted cognitive rational approaches primarily favored in organizational studies. Aesthetic knowledge is likely to be fragmented and nongeneralizable but it opens up alternative and numerous new analytical possibilities (Strati, 2000), and this seems to offer a different pathway to organizational creativity. Aesthetic understandings incorporate “odours, gestures, voices, glances and sensations” of organizational experiences (Strati, 2000, p. 19). Thus, aesthetic approaches have an inherent bodily focus while also capturing emotive elements of organizational life. Strati fervently claims that because organizational actors experience their organizations aesthetically, a sensory approach is a realistic and useful way of comprehending organizations and thus should be invoked in research and analysis. Strati defines aesthetic categories with adjectives used in everyday life as these offer a rapid, concise, and graphic depiction of organizational phenomena. His categories include beauty, the sublime, the ugly, the comic, the gracious, the picturesque, the tragic, and the sacred. Humor occupies a space of ambiguity and uncertainty, where people may be unsure whether to laugh, may worry about offence and societal constraints, and these constraining factors are exaggerated in rulefocused organizational contexts replete with diverse people, attitudes, and beliefs. Deciding that an event or interaction is funny (“comic” in Strati’s terms) requires making an instantaneous judgment that may or may not lead to the physical sensation of laughter. Judgments based on embodied responses are seminal to Strati’s aesthetic framework and rely on authentic and everyday personal, subjective reactions to organizational phenomena.

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An aesthetic approach is advantageous in analyzing the uncertainty endemic in modern organizational contexts, because people have an “anxious antipathy towards ambiguity” (Linstead, 2000, p. 66). While organizations traditionally create structure, rules, hierarchy, and protocols in the quest to reduce ambiguity, we cannot escape the multiple and complex interactions, interpretations, emotions, and sensory experiences engendered by organizational actors and their experiences. Aesthetic, sensory knowledge is powerful and may create amazement and move a person who may reflect, laugh, or even cry, but responses are rarely neutral. Therefore, traditional cognitive and linguistic analyses of organizational life can be incomplete as organizational texts and experiences contain “a mixture of the unsaid . . .and the unsayable” (Linstead, 2000, p. 71). Thus, we may need to more thoroughly examine our authentic embodied responses to organizational stimuli and responses to humor are often immediate, powerful, and seemingly uninhibited and authentic. Strati (1999) emphasizes that organizational actors cannot escape their own sensory judgments of situations, and these are highly corporeal and thus their knowledge is gained through sensory faculties and this constitutes an aesthetic understanding. However, sensory knowledge is cognitively reconfigured into organizationally appropriate interpretations. Therefore, experiences that are repellent, repulsive, ugly, or even sublime, beautiful, and sacred are watered down, reinterpreted, and changed. This is also common in research, and Strati warns that corporeality is frequently “purged” from organizational analyses which leaves them devoid of “eroticism, beautiful or ugly sensations, perfumes and offensive odours, attraction and repulsion” (Strati, 1999, p. 4). Aesthetic approaches allow a researcher to embrace the multiform, multivoiced complexity and plurality of people and experiences within organizations. Such approaches involve accepting that “there is not one single text or interpretation that is privileged and peoples’ aesthetic experiences are constantly constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed” (Strati, 1999, p. 43). This diverse approach involving organizational constructionism, deconstruction, multiple interpretations, and plurality can be linked to creative processes that may open up the potential to see organizational activities differently and thus stimulate “professional creativity” as defined by Kaufman and Beghetto (2009). Aesthetic judgments vary dramatically but empathetic understanding is also important in aesthetic approaches as it allows researchers or organizational actors to embody another person’s experiences as if they were their own. Getting inside another person’s perspective may be another useful way of fostering, or at least appreciating, creative work, and ideas. An aesthetic approach is a more personal take on organizational life as it comprises subjective judgments made by the self, while

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simultaneously appreciating the differing judgments made by collegial others. This may open dialogues about difficult matters and offer a voice to all organizational members, potentially increasing creative outcomes. In Strati’s words, “organizational life often involves assertions that are not objective, universal and verifiable but are instead utterly personal, ones which convey something otherwise unsayable” (1999, pp. 112 113). Therefore, aesthetic understandings may incorporate cultural or symbolic elements and may also facilitate shared understandings that are constructed in the aesthetic experience. An aesthetic approach may be useful to explore workplace conflict, control, and authority. It may disrupt the rationalized processes that are often so valued in organizational contexts. There is an obvious overlap with approaches founded on social construction; therefore, aesthetic understandings offer an appropriately sensitive framework with which to study alternative approaches, people, and identities in organizations. Although one or more aesthetic categories may dominate in a specific organizational setting (e.g., the category of beauty in an art institution), the categories are often interwoven in subtle ways. This chapter concerns itself with understanding workplace humor and creativity, and the aesthetic category of the comic is the dominant approach in our analysis. However, it is apparent that other categories are intertwined with the comic and aspects of beauty, the grotesque, the graceful, tragic, ugly, and the sacred may all be present in our analysis regarding organizational humor. Thus, we acknowledge that finding or creating amusing, comic elements in everyday organizational life may be intertwined with other aesthetic reactions. A creatively humorous act devised within supposedly rationalized, profit-focused organizational arenas not normally concerned with aesthetic, or bodily interactions may generate a seminal moment of change or invention in an organization. Laughter may stimulate alternative thoughts and solutions to organizational conundrums. The comic enactment may be in itself a creative act or expression, escaping rationalized priorities, but also comedy and aesthetic reactions may create the conditions or foster an environment for creativity, idea work, and organizational innovation. Alternatively, a comic moment may fail and create chaos and disharmony, and may become ugly or transgress a sacred organizational process or artifact—both of which are aesthetic categories (Strati, 1999). The comic is concerned with different forms of laughter as well as actions that promote laughter (Strati, 1999, 2000). However, the comic engages with the other aesthetic categories and can dispel and transform repugnance caused by ugliness or that which might be experienced as grotesque. The comic can incorporate a variety of notions such as the grotesque, caricatures, irony, wit, and humor (Strati, 1999, 2000),

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all of which relate to creative language, actions, and performances. Using humor can dramatize social aspects and can make them absurd, paradoxical, nonsensical, or satirical, fostering a creative climate that encourages alternative expressions, experiences, and interpretations. The comic is a ubiquitous part of organizational life and is invoked to deal with key organizational facets such as superiors, inferiors, colleagues, community, gender, ethnicity, and occupational concerns (Strati, 1999, 2000). Thus we argue, comic enactments and their inevitable entanglement with the other aesthetic categories are highly valuable in producing alternative and innovative organizational moments of creative wonder. Combining the idea of humor as a creative organizational act with a sensory analysis, we next briefly outline the context for our research before turning to some specific interactions where organizational humor is embodied and sensory as well as creative and beneficial to those it touches.

CONTEXT Our data emerge from two different research projects that investigated workplace humor and organizational culture. An ethnographic approach was adopted with data collected during full immersion in a variety of different organizations. This offered the opportunity for observations, to actually experience humor and culture, while interviews were also conducted and relevant documents were collected whenever possible. The interactions we analyze next were captured through observation and participation in Interactions 1 and 3, while Interaction 2 was narrated and discussed in an interview setting by the key protagonist. In each case there was the opportunity for questioning and in-depth discussion with those involved in and around the interactions. With this multivoiced approach combined with our own interpretations of the interactions, we acknowledge our constructionist determination and see this as a highlight of the analysis as it offers a blending of world views with rich descriptions and details of the social reality for these organizational participants (see Berger & Luckmann, 1967; Cunliffe, 2008; Deetz, 1996).

INTERACTION 1: A SHORT WALK On one memorable occasion in an Information Technology (IT) organization, one of the researchers walked across the open-plan office, accompanied by a well-liked manager called Susan. Susan is physically

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petite, not quite 5 ft in height, and the researcher a mere 2 cm taller. They passed Jimmy, a physically large, young Pacific Island man. Jimmy is close to 7 ft tall and has a large, muscular build, and the organization had a special chair and desk made to accommodate him and increase his comfort at work. On first meeting Jimmy, his size was both noticeable and frequently commented upon. Additionally his stature was the target of workplace jokes which he appeared to endure goodnaturedly. Terms such as “giant,” “monster,” and “enormous” (or “ginormous” as a hybrid of two terms) were used by his colleagues to tease Jimmy, all of which he accepted good-naturedly. Laughing and chatting to each other as they walked, Susan and the researcher walked past Jimmy’s work area whereupon he started to sing, quietly but loud enough to be heard by all of his nearby colleagues. His song was the popular anthem from the Disney movie of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves: “hi ho. . . hi ho. . . it’s off to work we go” and was an overt tease of the two short women who laughed and continued on their way. Returning a short while later, another physically small woman had joined the group as they again passed by Jimmy’s desk. Adding to his earlier joke, he loudly declared: “Oh look- here’s a whole army of short people!” Hearty laughter greeted this remark from all those nearby, and the three diminutive women joined the goodnatured merriment. While humor orientated at body size has the potential to cause distress because people can be sensitive about their bodily form, in this case Jimmy was also often the target of bodily jokes and remarks and this was well known. Therefore, due to his own unusual size, his joke seemed funny, inclusive, and more acceptable as it highlighted the size differences between him and the short group. Due to his unusually large physical body, Jimmy stood out at work and it is likely that he felt different (and possibly somewhat marginalized) by his stature—may be even more so after having a special desk and chair built for him. Alternatively he may have felt valued by an organization prepared to customize office equipment to accommodate him comfortably. Because he was teased about his bodily form, Jimmy understood this aspect of jocular banter as an insider and thus felt free to similarly tease others. Humor allowed Jimmy to say the unsayable (see Freud, 1905), that is: “you women are very short, you are in a group (an army) and you can be compared to fairy-tale, cartoon dwarves.” As Jimmy frequently experienced “giant” jokes from colleagues, this teasing moment seemed to be an enjoyable opportunity for him to retaliate. Openly laughing at different bodily factors is risky and may be considered inappropriate at work. Feeling physically different can be alienating and marginalizing, but by emphasizing the comical juxtaposition of very small versus very big, Jimmy jokingly points out that short people are also different.

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Jimmy’s bodily form is atypical and he is openly teased about his physical size, but the good-natured experience in this encounter suggests that humor opens up an opportunity to acknowledge physical differences in a creative way that is accepted, pleasant, and even enjoyable. Of course this could have gone horribly wrong and the short women may have become highly offended at being compared to fictional, storybook dwarves and called “short,” but the other dynamics of humor such as group inclusion (see Plester & Sayers, 2007) and knowledge of the subjects resulted in a positive, collegial outcome rather than an insulted furore. Aesthetically, this interaction deals with bodily forms which can be perceived as beautiful, ugly, and/or grotesque depending on your perspective. The attribution, however, is that of the comic, as the workers chose to find humor in the size disparities and juxtapositions. Creatively, they draw upon popular literature (the Disneyfied 7 dwarves) to perform their joke which carries a risk in offending those involved. Instead the joke is warmly received, and this small every day, creative interaction constructs a new possible discourse around body size that can inform future interactions and on-going humor.

INTERACTION 2: TAKING THE HIGH GROUND In the same IT organization, a young woman named Kasey recounted her experience of a physically confronting prank that she had endured. Kasey is a physically small young woman in her 20s and she narrated how she had been enjoying banter and teasing with her male colleagues in the warehouse where products were stored for their IT organization. After several interchanges of jocular abuse (or banter), her male coworkers, laughing loudly, grabbed Kasey, tied her to the arms of the warehouse forklift, and elevated the forklift’s platform as high as it could go, leaving her tied and trapped. They then walked away laughing, leaving her helpless for some time before they returned to release her. When telling the story, Kasey revealed her fear of heights but did not disclose this to her coworkers at any time before or after the prank. Kasey laughed heartily as she narrated her story and acknowledged her personal pride in being singled out for the prank and in not showing any fear, although she certainly felt it. The overriding outcome of this prank for Kasey was the strong sense of inclusion that she felt with her all-male team, her appearance of being “tough” and her elevated (excuse the pun) social status in her organization as the story was subsequently shared throughout the workplace Although this narrative was not shared openly with senior management, it was widely and informally known that they came to hear of it and chose to do nothing about it.

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The bodily aspects are at the forefront of this incident which although framed as comic, certainly had the potential to be tragic if something had gone wrong. Kasey’s interpretation of the event did not see this as a health and safety violation or even intimidation, but as a sublime event that escalated her social standing and recreated her as a workplace hero. The interaction was creative, bodily, comical to Kasey and her team, and was seminal in recreating and recalibrating Kasey’s role in her male team as “one of the guys.” She gained respect from her team and throughout the wider organizational site. Framing this action as comic and a joke protects the protagonists from censure and certainly management turned a blind eye, but the risk in this prank is obvious and high. Because of the confronting, edgy nature of this kind of humor (sometimes called “hazing”), the rewards seem greater when it succeeds, as suggested by Kasey. The taboo and bodily features of this interaction make the prank highly memorable even if dangerous and risky for all involved. Such edgy, extreme, bodily humor has created an organizational legend that has lived on after the protagonists have departed. Such legends maintain and reinforce organizational culture even when they encompass less-than-desirable workplace behaviors.

INTERACTION 3: CUBICLE PRANK The “cubicle prank” has become reasonably well known on the Internet, but it is certainly memorable to see this carried out in reality as it takes quite a lot of physical effort. There are many creative ways that this might be enacted, and the version experienced in this research was both creative and included physical effort from a team of people. The financial company where this occurred had awarded a line manager (Brad) the honor of annual “Employee of the Year” and he was given prizes and a lavish celebration attended by senior management and his team of subordinates. The ceremony finished after work hours and most people went straight home. However, Brad’s entire team stayed behind in the office and acquired several rolls of toilet paper with which they spent some considerable time wrapping every item in his cubicle— large and small. The team assembled early the next morning awaiting Brad’s arrival, coffee cup in hand. One worker had a camera ready to video and photograph the moment, and Brad walked in and he abruptly stopped still— absolutely amazed. He laughed uproariously and repeated many times his disbelief and seeming pleasure at being pranked in this way. Shaking his head he repeated: “you guys. . .I can’t believe you did this. . .” (Plester, 2016, p. 74). Everyone laughed together and the team

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resumed their work tasks leaving Brad still chuckling and starting to unwind the vast amounts of toilet paper. Although not completely original, this prank was new and novel in this context, and it created much interest and good-natured comment throughout the workplace with people from other teams coming over to look, laugh, and joke with Brad and his team. It was good-natured, aesthetic, and it was also comical to see a cubicle transformed in this way. The outcomes were very positive as Brad interpreted this as a sign of his team’s affection for him and approval of his award. It also took them quite a bit of time and effort so their bodily actions suggested commitment to creating this joke. Pranks can of course backfire and promote annoyance, discomfort, and distress, but this one was enacted and received in good spirits and this was well noted by other organizational members. The prank and the bodily enactment created strong team camaraderie and goodwill. The manager’s response highlighted that he was open to laughter and joking as part of their combined workplace context. Photographs captured the visual aesthetic and were shared around the organization as well as with family and friends. The prank succeeded gracefully, and it is surprising how picturesque a wrapped cubicle can be! This warm and well-executed joke created an inclusive and coordinated team dynamic that was the envy of other organizational teams. The light-hearted atmosphere permeated the workplace for some time following this prank thus satisfying the criteria for creativity in that it was novel (in this context) and useful in the on-going effects created for the people it touched.

CONCLUSION Some humor involves putting one’s body “on the line” -as seen in our three embodied interactions taken from actual workplace experiences. Workplace humor studies tend to analyze cognitive forms of humor and joking such as wordplay and other verbal humor. Bodily humor and the associated physical aspects are not often considered in organizational humor analyses, and our data offer a significant point of difference in its bodily focus. However, aesthetic elements of the comic abound, especially in pranks that may incorporate beauty, ugliness, or even grotesquery. Humor might include sublime moments or challenge something sacred or taboo, may be picturesque and graceful, and could even become tragic in some circumstances. However, in linking these interactions to Strati’s aesthetic workplace dimensions, all are experienced as comic, if not by our readers, then at least by the participants, narrators, and workers who enacted and experienced these moments.

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There is creativity in our interactions—both in the execution of the jokes and pranks and also, more importantly in what was created from them. Admittedly, it is small creativity in these everyday interactions, and Kaufman and Beghetto, would categorize it as “little-c creativity” (2009, pp. 1 2), but the creation of acceptance, camaraderie, inclusion, and goodwill are significant to those swept into the interactions as participants or bystanders. While we are not claiming the kind of creative outcomes that directly result in products or innovations or disruptive technology, we are claiming a window into the construction of creative moments, episodes, and even cultures where unlikely configurations of workers and managers collude to create surprises, “mysteries,” connections, stories, and symbols which affirm fluidity, adaptability, intimacy, and identity in spaces where rational, planned endeavor can become the norm. That so much joking happens in ways that use and highlight “bodies” must be seen as a form of (often good natured) subversion of work norms which are more comfortable with cognitive, disembodied “head” ways of working. If we understand body joking as a colorful, unpredictable, and innately humanistic thread running through an often more sedate, benign, controlled, and routinized organizational weave, then hopefully we can see how it might seed the different tangential kinds of interactions that turn into more quantifiable creative processes. In these workplace contexts, heroes, legends, cartoon characters, and venerated bosses have been celebrated through the comic dimension. Our examples depict working environments where alternative expressions are accepted and some risky expressions and activities permeate the humor which has influenced creative moments of collegiality. We are not advocating wild, dangerous pranks for all working sites but rather are pinpointing the intersection of body, creativity, and humor to open up new ways of thinking and being at work. We detail how humor creates cultural stories, legends, skits, and performances that can endure and become a richly significant element of organizational folklore.

A CAUTIONARY NOTE These genuine workplace examples depict some scenarios that are physically risky as well as potentially constituting forms of harassment. We recognize these problematic aspects and acknowledge that such inappropriate activities could see protagonists fired or disciplined in most work contexts. We have discussed these potential issues in other work elsewhere. All names in this chapter have been changed to protect participants and organizations.

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