Sparking Innovation Through Humor: A Meta-Analysis of Leader Humor, Creativity Versus Innovative Behavior, and Contextual Contingencies

Drawing on social exchange theory, this meta-analysis integrates 45 independent samples ( N = 12,696) to examine the relationships between leader humor, employee creativity, and innovative behavior. We further explore how these relationships are moderated by national culture and employee sample gender composition. Results reveal that leader humor is positively related to both creativity and innovative behavior, though the relationship with creativity is significantly stronger. At the broad contextual level, specific dimensions of national culture moderate the relationship between leader humor and creativity: individualism positively moderates this relationship, whereas uncertainty avoidance and restraint act as negative moderators. However, national culture does not significantly moderate the relationship between leader humor and innovative behavior. At the local contextual level, employee gender composition plays a key moderating role: leader humor's relationship with creativity is stronger in female-dominated samples, while its relationship with innovative behavior is stronger in male-dominated samples. These findings contribute to reconciling previous inconsistencies and highlight the importance of considering both broad and local contextual factors in future leadership research.