Julian Faid

Research Focus

Organizational life is saturated with humour, and yet the small jokes, running gags, and shared laughter that fill workplaces are rarely treated as serious objects of study. I situate my research at the intersection of institutional theory and the social construction of emotion to ask how humour functions as an institutionally significant practice, shaping what members of organizations come to feel, recognize, and treat as belonging.

Using ethnographic methods, I study humour as a co-constructed practice through which organizations teach members what is funny here, who can laugh at what, and what affective textures hold the work together. My research contributes to a growing conversation about the emotional and affective foundations of institutional life, with attention to the everyday practices through which organizations are sustained, contested, and remade.