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The purpose of this paper is to examine affective events theory (AET) by testing the mediating effect of employees’ positive affect at work in the relationships of leaders’ use of positive humor with employees’ work engagement, job performance, and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs); and the moderating effect of transformational leadership style on the relationship between leaders’ use of positive humor and subordinate’s positive affect at work.

Data were obtained from 235 full-time employees working for a large information technology and business consulting corporation. Moderated mediation (Hayes, 2013) was performed to test the proposed model.

Leaders’ positive humor was related to creation of subordinates’ positive emotions at work and work engagement. Positive emotions at work did not mediate between leaders’ humor and performance or OCBs. In addition, leaders’ use of transformational leadership style made the relationship between leaders’ positive humor and employees’ positive emotions at work stronger.

This study provides evidence of the positive relationship of leaders’ positive humor with employees’ positive emotions at work and work engagement. Such knowledge may help to inform the training workshops in humor employed by practitioners and potentially create a more enjoyable and fun workplace, which can lead to greater employee engagement.

AET helps explain effects of leader humor, but the effects of are complex. Leader’s use of even positive humor is most likely to have favorable effects mainly depending on their leadership style (transformational) and if their humor successfully leads to positive emotions among employees.

The purpose of the article is to examine the interplay between charismatic leadership and two follower characteristics in predicting safety behaviors during the Covid-19 pandemic in two distinct countries.

The quantitative investigation was conducted during the first wave of the Covid-19 crisis in India and Germany. Given the importance of safety behaviors during the pandemic, the authors proposed high charismatic public leadership, the perception of crisis and belief in science of the constituent influence safety behaviors.

Consistent with the hypothesis, the authors found that there was a positive relationship between charismatic leadership and safety behaviors. Contrary to the expectations, belief in science did not moderate the relationship between charisma and safety behaviors. Opposite to the hypotheses, the relationship between charisma and crisis was stronger under followers' low in perception of crisis.

The findings contribute to the understanding of charisma during a crisis and the role of followers' perceptions. Implications include raising awareness about the importance of charismatic leadership in encouraging critical safety behaviors during a crisis, but these effects depend in part on the followers' attributions of the public leader.

The paper uses social cognitive theory to explore reactions to performance evaluation processes as situated cognitions by examining the relationship between key elements of employees’ schemas about an organizational environment, preparation for evaluation, and these reactions. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Survey of 260 employees of eight organizations in a Midwestern US city.

Job resource adequacy, communication adequacy, coworker relationships, and preparation time are significantly and positively associated with employee reactions to performance evaluation processes. Preparation time moderates the association between organizational context and employee reactions.

A social cognitive perspective on performance evaluation broadens the scope of extant research. This study is limited by cross-sectional design but opens the door to future experimental and longitudinal research.

Performance evaluation processes are situated in an organizational context. Organizational interventions to improve perceptions of this key process could focus on better communication and encouraging preparation, especially if job resources are less adequate.

This research contributes to the performance evaluation literature by applying social cognitive theory to performance evaluation reactions as situated cognitions, calling attention to the broader organizational context in which these processes occur.