The relationship between managers' humor styles and employees' attitudes towards organizational cynicism: A research on the automotive industry in Bursa city

Humorous elements, which are used effectively in the communication process between managers and employees in organizations, are an effective factor in shaping the attitudes and behaviors of employees towards the organization. How managers perceive the way and purpose of humor use by employees can cause employees to develop cynical attitudes towards the organization. The main purpose of this thesis study is to investigate the relationship between the perceptions of the humor styles of the managers of the automotive sector employees in Bursa province and the organizational cynicism attitudes of the employees. In line with the aim of the study, 13 hypotheses were developed and data were collected from 210 white-collar employees working in automotive companies located in Bursa. Two scales were used in the questionnaire to determine the relationship between the humor styles of the managers and the organizational cynicism attitudes of the employees. There are 5 demographic questions in the first part of the questionnaire, which consists of three parts and 45 statements. In the second part of the questionnaire, there is the Humor Styles Scale, which consists of 32 expressions and four sub-dimensions, which was developed by Martin, Puhlik-Doris, Larsen, Gray and Weir in 2003 and adapted into Turkish by Ercüment Yerlikaya in 2003 in order to measure the different dimensions of humor for personal differences. In the last part of the questionnaire, there is the Organizational Cynicism Scale, which consists of 13 expressions and three sub-dimensions, which was developed by Brandes, Dharwadkar and Dean in 1999 to measure the organizational cynicism level of employees and was adapted into Turkish by Gamze Kalağan in 2009. The data collected through the survey were analyzed using the SPSS 26.0 package program. In the analysis of the data, Independent Sample T Test, One Way Anova, Post Hoc, Pearson Correlation tests were applied. As a result of the statistical analysis, between the Self-enchancing Humor styles of the managers and the Affective Cynicism attitudes of the employees, between the Afflilative Humor styles of the managers and the Cognitive and Affective Cynicism attitudes of the employees, between the Self-defeating Humor styles of the managers and the Cognitive Cynicism attitudes of the employees, between the Aggressive Humor styles of the managers and the Cognitive and Affective Cynicism attitudes of the employees while there is a statistically significant relationship between cynicism attitudes; between the Self-enchancing Humor styles of the managers and the Cognitive and Behavioral cynicism attitudes of the employees, between the Afflilative Humor styles of the managers and the Behavioral Cynicism attitudes of the employees, between the Self-defeating Humor styles of the managers and the Affective and Behavioral Cynicism attitudes of the employees, between the Aggressive Humor styles of the managers and the Behavioral Cynicism attitudes of the employees it was found that there was no significant relationship.