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Workplace romance, which also refers to office romance, occurs "between two members of an organization where sexual attraction is present, affection is communicated, and both members recognize the relationship to be something more than just professional and platonic". Compared to unwated or harassing sexual activities, romantic relationships at work are in the nature of jointly desired.

The Wall Street Journal reported that 47% of employees were currently involved in a workplace romance and 19% would engage in one if the opportunity arose. Similarly, the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) reported 40% of employees had been involved in a workplace romance at some point in their careers.

Before two people in the same workplace decides to participate in a romantic relationship, multiple factors will influence the formation of the romance. And generally, they must experience a period to build up the interpersonal attraction. After then, they may consider whether they should engage in this kind of relationship depending on their own perception of workplace romance and the organizational culture. But no matter whether two people decide to further develop their romantic relationship in the organization, there will be an impact on the organization either positively or negatively.

In reality, there is arugment on whether workplace romances are problematic to management(e.g., jealousy, harassment, lost productivity), and thus need to be carefully legislated. To reduce the risks induced by workplace romance, the organizations usually introduce relavant policies to manage it. And in the meanwhile, the management of workplace romance has become a kind of art that are discussed by researchers and organizational management.

General Defintion
A workplace romance is a consensual relationship between two members of the same organization that have mutual sexual attraction. But the definition evolves as many forms of romantic relationships in organizations become the focus of the study of workplace romance. A close relationship at work can be defined as a workplace romance when two employees have acknowledged their mutual attraction to each other and have practised their romantic feelings in the form of a dating or otherwise intimate association. That is, romantic relationships, including workplace romances, involve (a) a strong desire and passion to be in the presence of one's romantic partner, (b) an intimate share of personal disclosures, (c) affection and respect, (d) pleasant emotional status such as feelings of need and be needed, happiness, and sexual gratification, and (e) physiological arousal and the desire for sexual acts such as petting, kissing, hugging, and intercouse with one's partner.

The Nature of Workplace Romance
Sternberg’s triangular theory of love can be used to assist in understanding the nature of workplace romance as it distinguishes between liking and loving feelings. The triangular theory of love identifies three components (intimacy, passion and decision/commitment) on which loving relationships including workplace romances are based. Five kinds of love that are relevant for defining workplace romance exist by combining these three components together. These five are liking, infatuated love, romantic love, fatuous love, and consummate love.

When two employees are first acquainted with each other, liking can occur as they are in the early stages of a close relationship. Infatuated love appears when two employees involve passionate physiological arousal immediately without feelings of intimacy or commitment. In another word, two employess fall in love at first sight. But when two employees are physically attracted and emotionally bonded, they express romantic love which encompasses both the intimacy and passion components. In addition, two members of a work group involving fatuous love can result in a long-term commitment depending on feelings of arousal or passion except feelings of bondedness. However, consummate love needs the combination of all three components, and thus, is the type of romantic relationship that couples in organizations may pursue.

The Formation of Workplace Romance (Factors)
Most romantic relationships are not shaped at the first sight. The formation of workplace romance is the same as the development of liking and loving between two organizational members is a process affected by multiple factors which are integrated to one type of workplace romance. Before coworkers decide to engage in a workplace romance, the interpersonal attraction and romantic attraction between coworkers are predicted by a series of factos.

Proximity (Propinquity)
Both functional proximity (e.g., how easy it is to have an interaction with coworkers) and geographic closeness (e.g., coworkers whose desks are close) are positively related to attraction. In the result of Anderson and Hunsaker's Survey, 68 per cent of the reported workplace romances are between two employees working in the same immediate vicinity, 94 per cent of the romances involved employees working in the same building, and 34 per cent of the romance participants shared the same offices.

Repeated exposure
Generally, the proximity to another employee can create opportunities to be exposed more, that is, to interact with that employee on many occasions. Previous workplace romance investigations have revealed that frequent interactions can result in an elevated perception of liking and, thus, the likelihood of inducing a romantic relationship is higher. According to Collins, the reason for an exposure effect in the workplace is that it introduces mutual trust and respect between employees which then enhances the probability of interpersonal attraction.

Job-gender Context
The job-gender context embraces the gender ratio, as well as the gendered nature of employees' job tasks. A well-known finding named sex segregation claimed that there are different distributions of men and women across occupations and organizations. The degree of sex segregation in an occupation can affect the degree to which men and women have chances to interact socially. However, social gender norms (e.g.,"Men should do X, and women should do Y") and macro expressions of gender and power usually decide the gender composition in an organization.

There is still no research showing that a masculine work environment or the job-gender context explicitly links with workplace romance. Therefore, this factor makes no specific predictions regarding workplace romance. But the mere presence of the opposite sex, as suggested by research on physical proximity and exposure, may lead to more interactions between male and female employees, more interpersonal attractions, and probably a greater incidence of workplace romance.

Attitude Similarity
Many case studies contend that people (a) fall in love with or marry the person like themselves, (b) are attracted to others with shared beliefs, values, and interests   , and (c) usually work with attitudinally similar people because an organization may screen potential employees for attitudinal fit within the existing organizational culture. Even though attitude similarity is a predictor of interpersonal attraction, it needs to be examined further in a workplace romance context.

In the field of organizational behavior, the reinforcement-affect model of attraction would predict that an employee will have a positive response that may result in liking if he or she receives a positive performance appraisal. For example, a subordinate may like his or her supervisor owing to the positive affect evoked by a favorable rating.

Attitudes toward Workplace Romance
An employee's attitude toward the appropriateness of involving in a romantic relationship at office is said to be a primary factor with respect to workplace romance. For exmaple, an employee's attitude toward attraction in the workplace can influence the way he or she manages the feelings of attraction at work. In addition, subordinates' attitudes toward romantic affairs at work can be influenced by supervisors' attitudes. Simultaneously, the manner in which management handles daily activities at work can set the tone for romantic affairs in the workplace.

In Powell's survey which examined employees' concern of sexual intimacy in the workplace, the findings suggest that engaging in a workplace romance can be perceived positively or negatively. For instance, the results of Haavio-Mannila et al.'s study support the opinion that a positive attitude toward flirting in the workplace is directly related to engaging in a workplace romance for both male and female employees. Nonetheless, such negative attitudes may stem from lots of factors such as one's (a) consideration of potential sexual harassment charges and legal actions, (b) fear of compromising financial conditions, and (c) religious upbringing and fidelity considerations.

Job Autonomy
Job autonomy includes the freedom to move in the work context and to make contacts with coworkers, and the ability to make decisions about one's own work. The data in Haabio-Mannila et al.'s survey indicated that 40 per cent of the females with autonomous jobs had been involved in a workplace romance, while only 25 per cent of the females with less autonomous jobs had been involved in the same type of romantic affair. Essentially, job autonomy enables employees to increase proximity and exposure frequency that can create the opportunities to develop a romantic relationship.

Organizational Culture
Organizational culture acts as an indicator telling employees what types of behavior will be tolerated, including inappropriate or sexually coercive behaviors. Specifically, Mainiero discovered that slow-paced, traditional, and conservative organizational cultures (e.g., banking, finance) were associated with fewer workplace romances than were fast-paced, action-oriented, dynamic, liberal cultures (e.g., advertising) which usually have an atmosphere of intense pressure and activity that stimulates sexual excitement and tend to be less stringent with romantic affairs at work. "Hot" cultures are used to describe this type of organizational culture in which romances are more likely to happen. . And presumably, the "hot" cultures send signals to employees that expressions of sexual interest are acceptable in the workplace, which, in turn, affect employees' decisions to participate in romantic relationships.

The Impact of a Workplace Romance
For scholars and managers, there is a very important and unresolved issue.It is about whether workplace romance should be prevented as it has both positive and negative impact on the employees Therefore, arguments continue, and multiple factors have contribute to the degree of the impact. For example, in different organizations, the impact of workplace romance may have different effect as the structure of organization varies.

Negative Impact
Many scholars and managers hold the opinion that a very bad influence could be brought to the company. More specifically, workplace romance may result in a negative publicity, sexual harassment claims, and even criminal charges, particularly when an executive and a subordinate are involved in this relationship. Negative consequences could be mainly classified into the following four categories.

Sexual Harassment
Different from many people's thought, many workplace romance at work could not be classified as sexual harassing. In some cases, the workplace romance is enjoyed by the employee, while in the other cases, sexual harassment truly exists. However, the boundary between workplace romance and sexual harassment is unclear and ambiguous. In addition, different people may consider one behavior in totally different ways. For example, one employee may regard a romantic affair as sexual harassment, while the other one may consider it as a public romance.

In literature, the major source of sexual harassment is workplace romance. After the break down of a workplace romance, if one party try to achieve the reconciliation, the attempt may be considered as harassment. Many sexual harassment is a direct result of workplace romance. According to one survey, 24% of participants claimed that sexual harassment has been regarded as a direct result of workplace romance in their orgnizaton

Potential Retaliation between Employees (Conflicts between coworkers after break ups)
When office relationships end in a breakup, it can not only ruin the relationship between the two co-workers involved, but it can also eliminate any personal connections that the employees had with their previous partners department. Because the two employees will continue to see each other on a daily basis, the breakup can cause negative feelings toward the other individual as well as a reminder of one's failure.

The Impact on the Productivity
Workplace romance could have a negative impact on the work productivity, as romance require both time and attention. As the workplace romance could distract the attention of the employees involved, the performance of the employees would be significantly affected.Fellow employees are likely to notice any decline in an individual's work because their workload is often determined by their co-workers. Concentration levels may decrease depending on the stage in the relationship.

Also, workplace romance affects not only two people involved in the relationship but also the other colleagues who work in the same place with them. The intimate behavior will distract the attention of the colleagues, making them hard to focus on their work. What's more, as the two people involved focus less on their work, the workload of their colleagues would increase, as extra time need to be spared on the possible negligence of the couple.

Conflict of Interest
Conflict of interest often arise in workplace relationships especially when the couple works in different departments. Their opinions may differ, and they may disclose private information to each other that may hurt either side when making important company decisions. Many companies have policies that do not allow married couples to work together to avoid conflicts of interest in hopes of maintaining the integrity of the company as well as protecting the couple's relationship. However, some companies do allow married couples to work together but may provide guidelines on what is ethical and what is not. While working together at the same level may be acceptable, when the couple works in hierarchical roles, the standards may change. Another type of relationship that may cause a conflict of interest is when an employee is involved with a manager or an individual in a higher position. Coworkers may feel as if the employee in the relationship is receiving special treatment, and this in turn can affect the way employees trust the management of the company.

Positive Impact
Most of the researches are focused on the negative impact of the work place romance. However, the impact of the workplace romance could be positive in some areas. The relationship between the couple could in turn contribute to the performance of other colleagues and the entire organizations.

Increase the Productivity
The employees who involve in a workplace romance tend to have a productivity growth at work comparing with the other employees. Degree of the productivity may not be very high in the beginning of the relationship, as workplace romance requires large amounts of time and energy. As long as the primal excitement lessens, productivity tends to increase significantly. In order to maintain the romance relationship within the company, people tend to work harder and more active to acquire the approval of their supervisor. As a result, an very impressive performance could be achieved. What's more, if the employees who involved in a workplace romance get married in the end, their productivity could increase to the the maximum level, as all the emotional needs have been satisfied.

Promote the Morale in the Workplace
Simply watching two colleagues fall in love could significantly increase the morale of the workplace. As a human being, people tend to be easily infected by others' happiness, especially when they are someone you know.

The attitudes of the two people involved in the romantic relationship are often uplifting, and they become happier individuals, which reflects back on their attitudes toward their work and their coworkers. The other employees that see this relationship unfold often feel uplifted as well especially if they were able to play a part in the development of the budding relationship.

Improve Teamwork, Communication, and Cooperation
With the workplace romance, people who involved in the relationship could maintain a happier emotion everyday. They could be easier to work with and communicate with. Romantic relationships in the workplace allow the individuals involved to become more open and willing to cooperate with each other. As they have more positive attitudes toward their work, individuals are often easier to work with because they feel more comfortable expressing their ideas and criticisms with their significant other. This behavioral change can lead to more effective work groups, and in the end, a more productive atmosphere could be achieved.

Also, a couple's relationship can provide further communication channels within the workplace, especially if the individuals are members of different departments. The personal connection the two individuals have with each other can allow the members of their respective departments to feel more comfortable communicating back and forth as well. Because the channels of communication become more open and accessible, conflicts between departments are also reduced allowing the company to work more effectively as a whole.

The Management of Workplace Romance in the Organizations
Statistically, according to a recent study conducted by MSNBC com, 53 percent of intimate relationships end in one year time, and 84 percent end within five years. Therefore, the majority of intimate relationships will end in a short time, not to mention the potential to cause all kinds of problems.

Workplace romance is treated as tumor within an organization in the traditional view due to its negative effects. But contemporarily, from the common point of view, workplace romances are not illegal and are not quite typically the target of litigation. However, there are still potential risks risen from workplace romances from an organization’s perspective. They may dissolve and lead to sexual harassment claims, disrupt the staffs’ working performance owing to breakups of couples and cause unfair personal benefits. But when we come to the positive view, workplace romances can also have rewards such as enhancement of job performance and job satisfaction. The following four strategies are generally implemented by management in reality.

Written Workplace Romance Policy
A written policy, ethics code and performance management system throughout the organization should be developed and be embedded in the organizational culture. It usually should at minimum state and justify the following four aspects:(a) types of romances that are permitted or encouraged,(b) types of romances that are discouraged,(c) types of romances that are prohibited, and (d) actions management will take if employees violate any of the terms in the policy.

In addition, the written workplace romance policy is recommended to be a part of the ethical codes of organizations by HR experts and professionals. Also, due to different background and cultures of organizations, ethical codes within them are unique from those of others. That means the specific written details on workplace romance are also distinct.

The different criteria of diverse organizations take place in sexual, hierarchy and cross-department or homo-department. Based on specific organizational culture, a clearly and well-defined written workplace romance policy should take particular occasions into account and make full-scale strategies in face of various kinds of workplace romance cases.

Cost Management
As organizations are more likely to suffer negative consequences from workplace romances while romantic affairs are unavoidable occuring among employees, cost management is necessary to ease the detrimental effect for organizations.

When we come to the cost management part of management process of workplace romance, clear judgments should be made on whether it is a real love story or bad relationship that declines the job performance of participates or causes work disruption. From the traditional viewpoint, prohibition of extramarital workplace romances tends to be the best way to deal with the potential risks may be caused by the relationship. However, an increasing number of HR experts assert that discouraging would be a much more favorable approach than completely prohibition.

However, in case of the severe consequences caused by negative-related workplace romances, such as favoritism, exploitation and sex discrimination, relationships like direct-reporting supervisor-subordinate romances and romances between senior-level and lower-level employees should be prohibited in order to achieve the goal on the organizational level. Also, some types of workplace romances, which are widely considered to be unethical, should be prohibited as well. For example, if one or both participates involved in the romance relationship have already married to someone else, the romance would be an unethical one and should be banned originally in the written policy or punished if occurs.

In some organizations, a love contract exists to set norm of romance relationship. Within the love contract, two participates should state that their workplace romance is consensual, voluntary, welcome, and unrelated to their professional relationship at work; and each employee is free to end the romance at any time without coercion, prejudice, or any job-related consequences. But as a budding approach to manage the workplace romance, the pros and cons of the love contract are not clearly specified yet.

Benefit management
Organizations should permit romances between power-balanced employees and monitor the romances regularly as part of a performance management system and attempt to boost the employees’ job performance and systematic benefit.

First, managers and HR leaders should set a measurement system to judge the level of participants’ performance, satisfaction, involvement and commitment related to the workplace romance they are keeping.

Second, supervisors need to know that a slight decrease in employees’ performance may occur in the early phase of the romance process because of distraction towards love affair from daily work. They need to take steps to guide the couples to give considerations to both work and romance. For better guidance, some experienced couples can coach the new ones and share suggestions.

The training program
All organizations should conduct training for the entire employee population on unlawful harassment prevention, including the organization’s policies and procedures on workplace relationships, on at least a yearly basis. With the usage of the computer based training program, training has become much more easier to implement. Again, such training should be comprehensive and cover all the protected categories, not just sexual harassment.

For HR leaders, they play an important role in the workplace romance staff. They should be able to counsel employees in workplace romances, manage the risks and rewards of a workplace ,and respond to harassment complaints. Several steps should be taken as follows.

To start with, HR leaders should apply appropriate counsel methods and give positive suggestions and guidance to those employees involved in a workplace romance relationship.

In addition, they need to make balanced performance management of both costs and rewards of workplace romance.

Last but not least, HR leaders should be trained on how to respond to harassment complaints from a prior romance case.

All in all, low productivity, harassment, and conflicts of interest have other sources in the firm besides workplace romances. If the firm has good policies to deal with these general problems, then there is no need to prohibit one small possible source of them. The social costs of banning workplace romance are just too great, given that firms must already have policies that deal with the wider range of employee behavioral problems to which workplace romances contribute a very small amount. .

The Risk of Sexual Harassment After a Workplace Romance
Although romance is generally supposed to be a good thing, relationships which cross hierarchical boundaries, present a conflict of interest, or call into question aspects of judgment or favoritism can be disruptive. When the romance in the workplace relation sours, it can become sexual harassment, which requires supervision in accordance with law and intracompany human resource policy reaction. As a result, although workplace romance and sexual harassment are different in legal concepts, researchers have begun to question whether these two concepts are independent social–sexual phenomena. The concern is that soured workplace romances can raise Sexual Harassment between the people in this relation.

Sexually harassing behavior at work involves unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other physical or verbal conduct of a sexual nature that is unwanted. Less blatant types such as gender harassment and unwanted sexual attention, which constitute hostile work environment harassment, are more common than blatant types such as sexual coercion, which constitutes quid pro quo harassment.

Perceived Moral Intensity
Jones’issue-contingent model of ethical decision making in organizations asserts that moral issues like social–sexual behavior in workplace vary according to their perceived moral intensity. Features of the issue varied with respect to their perceived magnitude of consequences and social consensus determined the moral intensity of an issue. According to the study, features of the dissolved workplace romance and harassing behavior represent characteristics of the moral issue that vary in terms of their moral intensity. Magnitude of consequences is an individual’s perceived degree of benefit or harm that a moral act inflicts on a target. Social consensus is an individual’s perceived degree to which there is collective agreement that a moral act is good or evil or,appropriate or inappropriate. The greater the perceived magnitude of consequences of, or social consensus regarding, a moral issue, the greater the issue’s perceived degree of moral intensity. An issue’s perceived degree of moral intensity predicts the extent to which an observer considers the issue to be ethical in nature.

Hierarchical Romances
Employees believe that hierarchical romances are more ethically inappropriate relative to lateral romances because of jealousy and suspicion regarding favoritism. As a result, a hierarchical romance involving a direct-reporting supervisor–subordinate relationship should be even more ethically inappropriate than a hierarchical romance including an indirect-reporting supervisor–subordinate relationship. An employee who is involved a workplace romance with his or her immediate supervisor will entail a greater dependency and social power differential than employees who got in an indirect-reporting hierarchical romance which means that people in the relations work in different units in the organization. As a result of this greater dependency and power differential, employees may be more suspicious and jealous of direct-reporting than indirect-reporting romances. Finally, with respect to the perceived magnitude of consequences, direct-reporting hierarchical romances tend to produce more harm relative to indirect-reporting hierarchical romances.

Workplace Romance History
According to recent study, if a male accused of sexual harassment got in a workplace romance with the female complainant previously, the male should be judged as less responsible and the female should be more responsible for the sexual harassment. When responding to a harassment complaint and decide the degree of appropriateness of the actions, the company should consider whether the accused and complainant had a history of workplace romance undefinedand whether the prior romance was lateral versus direct-reporting hierarchical. It is less appropriate to penalize a male accused of sexual harassment when he and a female complainant had a prior history of workplace romance. As a result, the appropriate human resource actions of companies should be in accordance with, and follow from, their judgments of responsibility for the harassing behavior, and the personnel actions of the company may also be the result of setting different standards for determining acceptable social–sexual behavior when an accused and complainant have a history of romantic involvement.

Famous Cases
The following two cases demonstrate the danger and harm brought by the workplace romance.

In 2014, after the CEO of the American Red Cross (ARC) was found in an intimate relationship with his regional director, he was forced to resign. A forensic investigation is in process to decide whether any of the money from the charity was spent inappropriately.Since the woman who has a sexual relationship with him is now reported pregnant.During the time, ARC itself was fighting with a negative image and unreliable management. This scandal has left a very bad influence on the ARC. As ARC has changed 8 CEO in 12 years.

David Colby, the CFO of Health insurance giant Well Point Inc.’was suddenly fired last year, as a result of a misconduct. Simultaneously, more than 10 women around the country were romanced by him. He gave them his promises, and then return to his world. Since 2005, he is said to has proposed to at least 12 women. Ironically, with his contribution to the company in 2004, the Institutional Investor magazine has given him a award of the best CFO.

After exposed to the public, the affair would impose a very bad impact on the publicity of the companies. In some case, the even the financial situation and the competitive of the organization would be affected by the event.Not to mention the cost of lawsuits, the exhaust of time and company resources, and the impact on the moral of the employees