Ethical Perceptions of Corporate Policies Associated with Employee Computer Humor

This paper investigates human resource practitioner opinions of the characteristics, restrictions, and surveillance of employee computer humor. The humor is associated with reading or writing e-mail and internet content. Based on a survey of 102 public and private sector human resource management practitioners. "reading humerous e-mail at work from colleagues" was the most common perceived employee behavior associated with computers and humor. Roughly half of their organizations placed restrictions on e-mail and Internet usage. About half performed some surveillance of e-mail and the Internet. Most correlations between policies limiting personal computer use were not significantly associated with perceived employee computer behaviors. However, the strongest correlation was between the total ban of personal computer use and entering humor into home Web pages. Numerous future research implications are discussed.