Provideing a humorous leadership model in manufacturing organizations by studying the thermal power plant industry affiliated to the Iran Ministry of Energy

Considering the importance of having a cheerful atmosphere and friendly interaction of senior managers with the employees and the preference of humorous leaders over serious leaders, this research aims to provide a humorous leadership model by studying thermal power generation industry, in a qualitative way according to the Grounded Theory method. The research is exploratory in nature and applied-developmental in terms of purpose. Based on the judgmental-targeted sampling method and with the aim of achieving theoretical saturation, a semi-structured interview was held with 21 CEOs of power plants, who were familiar with the concept of humor and its application. The reliability of the conducted interviews was confirmed by Cohen's kappa test and the agreement coefficient of 82% indicated a good agreement between the experts. Based on the analysis, 135 main concepts were extracted, and finally 9 main categories were identified. Then, the humorous leadership model was presented with the Charmaz approach was presented for the first time in Iran's production organizations, considering its characteristics and components. The results indicate that humorous leadership can help the country's thermal power generation industry in the competitive world to use this style for improving the work environment and gain a competitive advantage over competitors.