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Behavioral Sciences
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Personal Workplace Relationships: Implications for Work and Life in a...
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Personal Workplace Relationships: Implications for Work and Life in a Rapidly Changing Society

A special issue of Behavioral Sciences (ISSN 2076-328X). This special issue belongs to the section "Organizational Behaviors".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 May 2022) | Viewed by 27086

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Rebecca M Chory

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Management, Frostburg State University, Frostburg, MD, USA
Interests: workplace romance and friendships; social–sexual workplace behavior; women’s leadership; student–instructor relationships; organizational justice; antisocial organizational behavior
Prof. Dr. Sean M. Horan

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Communication, Fairfield University, Fairfield, CT, USA
Interests: deceptive affection; workplace romance; deception; affection; safer sex communication; close relationships; interpersonal communication; organizational communication

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Personal workplace relationships are a common feature of organizational life, as contemporary management and leadership philosophies encourage employee camaraderie, emotional connection, and teamwork, and communication technologies used to accomplish work tasks connect organizational members outside of the workplace. Personal workplace relationships are informal, voluntary, mutual, and consensual relationships between two employees. Employees in these relationships grow to know and interact with each other as whole persons with unique experiences, personalities, and opinions, and they develop relatively strong emotional connections with each other. These relationships may be hierarchical in nature, i.e., involving employees of different statuses (e.g., superior–subordinate workplace romances), or lateral, i.e., involving employees of the same status (e.g., peer–peer workplace friendships). Examples of personal workplace relationships include workplace friendships (same-sex, cross-sex, and/or cross-sexuality friendships between employees), workplace romances (same-sex or opposite-sex employee couples who are dating, married, engaged, cohabitating, and/or involved in extramarital affairs, hook-ups, flings, and/or friends with benefits liaisons), work-spouse relationships (e.g., work-husband/work-wife), and informal mentorships. For a full discussion of these relationships, please consult Horan, Chory, Craw, and Jones (2021).

Recent events, such as the emergence of the #MeToo movement, the 2020 U.S. Supreme Court ruling prohibiting employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and the COVID-19 pandemic, which exponentially increased the adoption of communication technologies to virtually and remotely complete job tasks, provide a unique historic context in which to examine the opportunities and challenges associated with personal workplace relationships. As younger generations express more liberal attitudes toward these types of workplace relationships, desire more care, informality, and flexibility in their work lives, and increasingly use social media to connect with others, the boundaries between our personal and work lives and relationships will continue to blur.

This Special Issue invites manuscripts representing a broad range of approaches and perspectives on personal workplace relationships that may be studied across a variety of organizations. In addition to the aforementioned relationship types, we welcome submissions focusing on personal workplace relationships in family businesses, executive coaching, spiritual counseling, and student–instructor and doctor–patient contexts. We welcome papers examining topics such as social–sexual workplace communication and behavior; consensual employee sexual activity (e.g., extramarital affairs, hook-ups, friends with benefits); strategic sexual performances; dissolved workplace romances and friendships; social media and communication technology use in personal workplace relationships; emotional labor, stress, and burnout associated with managing personal workplace relationships; affective and sex role spillover; favoritism and preferential treatment; regretted disclosures; pillow talk; and gossip/rumors surrounding personal workplace relationships. Submissions investigating the roles of sex/gender, sexual and gender identity, ethnicity/race, age, occupation and industry, national and organizational culture, and historical time period in personal workplace relationships are also appropriate for this Special Issue. Finally, we invite submissions exploring the intersections between personal workplace relationships and diversity, equity, and inclusion (e.g., stereotypes, prejudice, discrimination, microaggressions); ethics (e.g., organizational justice, ethics of workplace romance policies); human resources (e.g., job recruitment, referrals, hiring, promotions; the trailing partner; employee training; feedback and performance evaluations); and news and entertainment media (e.g., high-profile workplace romances in the news; portrayals of workplace friendships in sitcoms).

Prof. Dr. Rebecca M Chory
Prof. Dr. Sean M. Horan
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Behavioral Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • personal workplace relationships
  • workplace romance
  • workplace friendships
  • work spouses
  • social–sexual workplace communication and behavior
  • sexual harassment
  • work/life

Published Papers (11 papers)

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Editorial

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10 pages, 277 KiB  
Editorial
Personal Workplace Relationships: Unifying an Understudied Area of Organizational and Personal Life
by Rebecca M. Chory and Sean M. Horan
Behav. Sci. 2023, 13(9), 760; https://doi.org/10.3390/bs13090760 - 13 Sep 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1212
Abstract
Relationships that cross the work–life domain have long been of interest to scholars in multiple disciplines, including Communication, Management, and Psychology. Close relationships that span work–life borders are called personal workplace relationships. Personal workplace relationships are voluntary informal relationships between two members [...] Read more.
Relationships that cross the work–life domain have long been of interest to scholars in multiple disciplines, including Communication, Management, and Psychology. Close relationships that span work–life borders are called personal workplace relationships. Personal workplace relationships are voluntary informal relationships between two members of the same organization. These relationships are mutual and consensual and have a relatively strong emotional component. They involve the partners knowing and communicating with each other as unique individuals. The goal of this Special Issue (“Personal Workplace Relationships: Implications for Work and Life in a Rapidly Changing Society”) is to explore this specific form of work–life intersection. To that end, we present the scholarly work of researchers from diverse backgrounds who share the goal of better understanding workplace relationships. In this opening essay, we describe how we began to study this area, we preview the articles in this Special Issue, and we conclude with recommendations for future research on personal workplace relationships. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Personal Workplace Relationships: Implications for Work and Life in a Rapidly Changing Society)

Research

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14 pages, 262 KiB  
Article
Instrumental Flirting: An Exploration of Charm in Decision-Making Groups
by David Henningsen and Mary Lynn Miller Henningsen
Behav. Sci. 2023, 13(7), 603; https://doi.org/10.3390/bs13070603 - 20 Jul 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1587
Abstract
The scholarship on flirting as a persuasive tactic in the workplace indicates that flirting can have negative consequences for task groups. The goal of this study was to extend the investigation of instrumental flirting by operationalizing this form of flirting as charm and [...] Read more.
The scholarship on flirting as a persuasive tactic in the workplace indicates that flirting can have negative consequences for task groups. The goal of this study was to extend the investigation of instrumental flirting by operationalizing this form of flirting as charm and by examining the consequences of charm in decision-making groups for the individual group members. In the current study, participants (60 women, 60 men) made decisions in four-person, mixed sex groups. The results of the study demonstrate that the use of charm was negatively associated with perceptions of group member task competence. Differences in perceptions of charm were also examined. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Personal Workplace Relationships: Implications for Work and Life in a Rapidly Changing Society)
21 pages, 591 KiB  
Article
Service Orientation and Customer Performance: Triad Perspectives of Sales Managers, Sales Employees, and Customers
by Ho-Taek Yi, MinKyung Lee and Kyungdo Park
Behav. Sci. 2022, 12(10), 373; https://doi.org/10.3390/bs12100373 - 30 Sep 2022
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2467
Abstract
This study examines how shop managers’ attitudes toward customers are transferred to sales employees, and thus affect customer performance. We surveyed shop managers, sales employees, and customers in five department stores in Seoul, South Korea, in June 2021 to determine the relationships among [...] Read more.
This study examines how shop managers’ attitudes toward customers are transferred to sales employees, and thus affect customer performance. We surveyed shop managers, sales employees, and customers in five department stores in Seoul, South Korea, in June 2021 to determine the relationships among service orientation, customer orientation, customers’ perceptions of sales employees’ authenticity, and customer performance. We found that sales managers’ service orientation positively influences sales employees’ service and customer orientation. Furthermore, this orientation positively correlates with customers’ perceptions of sales employees’ authenticity, thereby improving service performance and customer loyalty. Few studies have examined how institutional-level capacity and attitudes influence employees within organizations and how this, in turn, affects service performance. Thus, this study theoretically and empirically explores how sales managers’ attitudes and sales behaviors are transferred to sales employees and how this affects customer performance. The research findings fill a gap in the current understanding of customer performance in the service industry. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Personal Workplace Relationships: Implications for Work and Life in a Rapidly Changing Society)
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20 pages, 953 KiB  
Article
Understanding Disclosure of Health Information to Workplace Friends
by Catherine Y. Kingsley Westerman, Emily M. Haverkamp and Cheng Zeng
Behav. Sci. 2022, 12(10), 355; https://doi.org/10.3390/bs12100355 - 23 Sep 2022
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1855
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to learn about the process of disclosing health information to a coworker friend using the lens of Communication Privacy Management Theory. The study explores emerging themes regarding health information disclosure and predicts associations between privacy, social support, [...] Read more.
The purpose of this study was to learn about the process of disclosing health information to a coworker friend using the lens of Communication Privacy Management Theory. The study explores emerging themes regarding health information disclosure and predicts associations between privacy, social support, risk, stigma, and the willingness to disclose health information to a friend at work. Employees were asked to recall a time they shared health information with a coworker friend and report about the interaction via open-ended items and scales on a survey. The study found that as emotional support, instrumental support, perceived risk, and stigma of the information increased, so did the tendency to disclose to a coworker friend. Increased privacy of the information was associated with a decrease in the tendency to disclose. A thematic analysis of the open-ended results also revealed that employees shared information associated with personal on-going health problems to seek support, to relate to their coworker friends, and to maintain their friendship. The findings also indicated that employees were likely to receive social support from their coworker friends even if they were not seeking it. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Personal Workplace Relationships: Implications for Work and Life in a Rapidly Changing Society)
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17 pages, 293 KiB  
Article
“Don’t Get Your Meat Where You Get Your Bread”: Beliefs and Advice about Workplace Romance
by Betty H. La France
Behav. Sci. 2022, 12(8), 278; https://doi.org/10.3390/bs12080278 - 11 Aug 2022
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1834
Abstract
This investigation identified contemporary beliefs about workplace romance and compared how those beliefs have changed since 1986. Different kinds of advice about workplace romance, and how that advice was related to extant beliefs, were also evaluated. A nationwide sample (N = 259) [...] Read more.
This investigation identified contemporary beliefs about workplace romance and compared how those beliefs have changed since 1986. Different kinds of advice about workplace romance, and how that advice was related to extant beliefs, were also evaluated. A nationwide sample (N = 259) of organizational members with a variety of professional experiences responded to an anonymous online survey. Results indicated that there were three fundamental underlying beliefs about workplace romance: workplace romance is valuable, the right to demand privacy about workplace romance, and anti-workplace romance. Different types of advice—encouraging, warning, gender concern, and silence—were related to these existing beliefs. The substantial associations between beliefs and advice provide evidence for an implicit theory of workplace romance. Personal experience with such relationships was strongly related to the belief that workplace romance is valuable and the right to demand privacy about workplace romance. Additionally, personal experience was also associated with providing advice promoting workplace romance and advocating that employees should remain silent about engaging in such relationships. These results are discussed within the theoretical lens of boundary blending between the work sphere and the private sphere of social life. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Personal Workplace Relationships: Implications for Work and Life in a Rapidly Changing Society)
18 pages, 588 KiB  
Article
Research on the Influencing Mechanism of Paradoxical Leadership on Unethical Pro-Supervisor Behavior
by Suchao He and Xiaoying Yun
Behav. Sci. 2022, 12(7), 231; https://doi.org/10.3390/bs12070231 - 14 Jul 2022
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2910
Abstract
Paradoxical leadership is a leadership style that combines both employees’ individual needs and organizational requirements. The existing literature shows that paradoxical leadership has a positive influence on variables at the individual level, team level and organizational level. It is necessary to further explore [...] Read more.
Paradoxical leadership is a leadership style that combines both employees’ individual needs and organizational requirements. The existing literature shows that paradoxical leadership has a positive influence on variables at the individual level, team level and organizational level. It is necessary to further explore the negative impact of paradoxical leadership on the individual level (such as employees’ unethical pro-supervisor behavior), the path of influence and situational conditions. Based on social exchange theory, this paper studied the influence of paradoxical leadership on employees’ unethical pro-supervisor behavior, and clarified the mediating role of supervisor–subordinate Guanxi and the moderating effect of follower mindfulness. We conducted an empirical analysis on the data of 356 employees collected in two phases, and found that paradoxical leadership exerts a significant positive effect on unethical pro-supervisor behavior; supervisor–subordinate Guanxi has a partial mediating effect on the relationship between paradoxical leadership and unethical pro-supervisor behavior; and follower mindfulness moderates the influence of paradoxical leadership on supervisor–subordinate Guanxi, and moderates the intermediation of supervisor–subordinate Guanxi on the main effect. This paper enriches the existing research on the mechanism of influence of paradoxical leadership and deepens our understanding of boundary conditions in relation to the role of paradoxical leadership. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Personal Workplace Relationships: Implications for Work and Life in a Rapidly Changing Society)
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27 pages, 339 KiB  
Article
Creating and Sustaining Service Industry Relationships and Families: Theorizing How Personal Workplace Relationships Both Build Community and Perpetuate Organizational Violence
by Elizabeth K. Eger, Emily Pollard, Hannah E. Jones and Riki Van Meter
Behav. Sci. 2022, 12(6), 184; https://doi.org/10.3390/bs12060184 - 8 Jun 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 3054
Abstract
Service industry workers experience challenging labor conditions in the United States, including pay below the minimum wage, expected emotional labor, and harassment. Additionally, in part because they work long shifts in high stress environments in restaurants and bars, many build and form personal [...] Read more.
Service industry workers experience challenging labor conditions in the United States, including pay below the minimum wage, expected emotional labor, and harassment. Additionally, in part because they work long shifts in high stress environments in restaurants and bars, many build and form personal workplace relationships (PWRs). In 2021, we interviewed 38 service industry workers and managers during the COVID-19 pandemic where we examined occupational challenges they faced in the state of Texas, USA. Through our interpretive research, this essay showcases our inductive findings on how service industry workers and managers utilize communication to create and sustain PWRs. We identified how some PWRs are sustained through a unique form of occupational identification that cultivates a “service industry family”, which we term familial personal workplace relationships (familial PWRs). This extends past organizational communication scholarship on family to consider occupational identification. Furthermore, our research reveals that while PWRs may build communities through care and support, they also perpetuate organizational violence, like sexual harassment and bullying. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Personal Workplace Relationships: Implications for Work and Life in a Rapidly Changing Society)
16 pages, 536 KiB  
Article
The Association of Job and Family Resources and Demands with Life Satisfaction through Work–Family Balance: A Longitudinal Study among Italian Schoolteachers during the COVID-19 Pandemic
by Alfonso Landolfi, Massimiliano Barattucci, Assunta De Rosa and Alessandro Lo Presti
Behav. Sci. 2021, 11(10), 136; https://doi.org/10.3390/bs11100136 - 6 Oct 2021
Cited by 13 | Viewed by 3893
Abstract
Successfully balancing between work and family domains represents a major issue to both employees and employers, especially during COVID-19 pandemic times during which employees are often forced to work from a distance and turn to home-schooling. An occupational group particularly affected by work [...] Read more.
Successfully balancing between work and family domains represents a major issue to both employees and employers, especially during COVID-19 pandemic times during which employees are often forced to work from a distance and turn to home-schooling. An occupational group particularly affected by work changes due to COVID-19 pandemic restrictions is represented by schoolteachers. We aimed at examining the associations between some job-related and family-related antecedents on the one hand and, on the other, life satisfaction as an outcome, including work–family balance as a mediator. A total of 357 Italian teachers completed a questionnaire at two different times: job control, coworkers support, supervisor support, workload, family support, and family workload were assessed at Time 1; and work–family balance and life satisfaction were assessed at Time 2. Both data collections were performed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The hypothesized direct and indirect relationships were tested by utilizing structural equation modeling. Significant and positive indirect effects of focal predictors towards life satisfaction through work–family balance were found for job control, supervisor support, and family support. The paper contributed to the literature by testing Grzywacz and Carlson’s theoretical conceptualization of work–family balance and by attempting to delineate its repertoire of potential antecedents among schoolteachers. From a practical point of view, the present study emphasizes the crucial role that certain job antecedents and family antecedents play in promoting teachers’ work–family balance and life satisfaction. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Personal Workplace Relationships: Implications for Work and Life in a Rapidly Changing Society)
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Review

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11 pages, 240 KiB  
Review
Work/Life Relationships and Communication Ethics: An Exploratory Examination
by Janie M. Harden Fritz
Behav. Sci. 2022, 12(4), 104; https://doi.org/10.3390/bs12040104 - 11 Apr 2022
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2998
Abstract
Workplace relationships that transcend formal role boundaries offer benefits and challenges to organizations and relational participants. Communicative processes that form and maintain these relationships can be examined from a communication ethics perspective focused on the outcomes emerging from these relationships that define particular [...] Read more.
Workplace relationships that transcend formal role boundaries offer benefits and challenges to organizations and relational participants. Communicative processes that form and maintain these relationships can be examined from a communication ethics perspective focused on the outcomes emerging from these relationships that define particular goods for personal and organizational life. The blended nature of these relationships makes them host to potentially competing goods tied to public and private concerns. Considering the connection of virtue approaches to communication ethics in organizational settings to the turn to positive approaches to communication and organizational theory reveals avenues for ethical reflection and action in these increasingly important relational forms. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Personal Workplace Relationships: Implications for Work and Life in a Rapidly Changing Society)

Other

15 pages, 313 KiB  
Brief Report
Communicatively Restricted Organizational Stress (CROS) on Campus: An Exploratory Investigation of Stress and Support among Predominantly White University Faculty
by Alice E. Veksler and Justin P. Boren
Behav. Sci. 2022, 12(9), 299; https://doi.org/10.3390/bs12090299 - 23 Aug 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1959
Abstract
Communicatively Restricted Organizational Stress (CROS) is a phenomenon characterized by real and/or perceived prohibitions against communicating with others about one’s organizational stressors. Given that CROS is marked by an inability to utilize social support, effects are often profoundly negative for the organizational members. [...] Read more.
Communicatively Restricted Organizational Stress (CROS) is a phenomenon characterized by real and/or perceived prohibitions against communicating with others about one’s organizational stressors. Given that CROS is marked by an inability to utilize social support, effects are often profoundly negative for the organizational members. However, the extent to which CROS functions similarly across similar types of organizations is unknown. In this exploratory project, the effects of CROS are investigated in a small sample (n = 41) of predominantly white university faculty. Conceptualizations of CROS argue that it is dependent both on the existence of stress and the presence of close and potentially supportive relationships. Provided that academia is a high-stress environment characterized by a strong likelihood of the formation of Personal Workplace Relationships (PWRs), CROS should be prevalent for this population and should lead to negative effects. Results indicated that CROS exists for university faculty and that its prevalence correlated negatively with measures of social support. Furthermore, CROS-associated distress is positively associated with perceived stress, burnout, and overcommitment and negatively associated with work well-being and job satisfaction. Although objective physiological measures of health were collected, the data were not able to be analyzed. The discussion focuses on implications and directions for future research. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Personal Workplace Relationships: Implications for Work and Life in a Rapidly Changing Society)
8 pages, 203 KiB  
Commentary
“First Catch Your Hare”: Some Difficulties with, and Contextual Factors in, Understanding (In)Appropriate Workplace Relationships
by Steve Duck
Behav. Sci. 2022, 12(5), 126; https://doi.org/10.3390/bs12050126 - 27 Apr 2022
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1650
Abstract
The article considers the contextual factors that lead to descriptions of workplace relationships as appropriate and inappropriate. It reviews viewpoint, context of activity, and the tension between social and personal relationships in environments based on task completion. If relationships are the sum of [...] Read more.
The article considers the contextual factors that lead to descriptions of workplace relationships as appropriate and inappropriate. It reviews viewpoint, context of activity, and the tension between social and personal relationships in environments based on task completion. If relationships are the sum of series of interactions, then interactions must be judged in context before compilation. The vantage point of viewers will complicate these assessments, as will the rhetorical purpose of the reporter. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Personal Workplace Relationships: Implications for Work and Life in a Rapidly Changing Society)
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