Workplace Relationship

We started class on Monday by watching a clip from the movie The Devil Wears Prada. In this clip, the main character Andy Sachs is running countless errands for her boss, Miranda Priestly. As the clip progressed you could tell that Miranda had very little respect for Andy, and as soon as Miranda would enter the office she would throw her purse and coats on Andy’s desk as if it was a coat rack. Miranda saw Andy as a way to accomplish those mundane tasks that she simply didn’t have time for during her busy day. The second clip we watched was from the movie Office Space. In this clip, Peter comes into work on a Monday and as soon as he sits down he is confronted by his boss, Bill Lumbergh. As soon as the conversation between Peter and Bill concludes, Peter is again confronted by a “higher-up”. This conversation unfolds just as the previous one had. You can tell Peter is very frustrated by this and wants to change some things about the communication within his office.

The showing of these clips led into the class discussion of workplace relationships, organizational climates and organizational networks. Organizational networks are defined as systems of communications linkages within the workplace. An example of an organizational network is the University of Alabama’s very own elearning system. These organizational networks share three common characteristics; the nature of information, media/virtual networks such as Twitter and Facebook, and Network Density or the number of connections among people in the network.

Organizational climates define the emotional quality of an organization. There are specifically two different types of climates, defensive and supportive. Defensive climates are generally rigid in structure and contain very little support. On the other end of the spectrum are supportive climates, which tend to be more welcoming and supportive. Communication within organizations is based around six dimensions; Strategy vs. Spontaneity, Dogmatism vs. Flexibility, Control vs. Collaboration, Evaluation vs. Description, Detachment vs. Empathy, and Superiority vs. Equality. These dimensions define the drastic difference between supportive climates and defensive climates.

Workplace relationships can be divided into romantic relationships and professional peer relationships. While there are several different types of professions peers, there are only two types of romantic relationship. Professional peers include informational peers, collegial peers, special peers, and virtual peers. Romantic relationships include mixed-status relationships which are relationships between coworkers of different organizational status. The other romantic relationship is a supervisory relationship where one person outranks and supervises another.
The central and most important theme among all workplace relationships is communication. Whether this communication is verbal or non-verbal it is extremely detrimental to the success of any organization. As we discovered in our case study on Monday, two way communications between informational peers can make a difference in job security. Granted, certain topics that are shared between informational peers are often very private and should only be made known between certain workplace peers.
Certain companies have a strict policy not to hire couples or even relatives. Should these companies always abide by this policy or should they give some couples/relatives a chance to work with one another?

By: Ross Fielder