The Relationship between School Principals’ Humor Styles and School Climate

Described as “smiling thought” by Einstein, humor has been related to a number of organizational processes and outcomes, one of which is organizational climate. Climate of an organization is the result of its members’ everyday behaviors. Although there are studies on how humor influences organizational efficiency, there are few studies on the relationship between leaders’ humor and organizational climate. Specifically, although numerous studies have been done on the effect of leader behaviors on climate, the management literature is short of the studies on the influence of leaders’ humor behaviors on climate. In order to define the relationship between school principals’ humor styles and school climate, this study was designed as a relational survey model. Study group consisted of 356 teachers working at public schools in Kayseri in 2014-2015 academic year. Data collected by Humor Styles Scale and School Climate Scale was analyzed on SPSS 21.0 package program and descriptive statistics, t-test, ANOVA, Tukey test and Pearson correlation methods were used. According to the results, it was observed that as school principals’ humor style “Cynical Humor Style” was perceived most by the teachers and that their school climate perceptions were positive. Besides, significant positive correlations between positive humor styles scores and school climate scores, and significant negative correlations between negative humor styles and school climate scores were observed.