Workplace Dating & Sexual Harassment Issues
Workplace romance and sexual harassment in the workplace are the topics to be covered in this paper. There is a great deal of scholarly literature on those issues and they will be reviewed and critiqued in this paper, along with statistics that show workplace dating is an ongoing (although controversial and potentially tension-creating) phenomenon .
How Common is Workplace Dating?
The issue of workplace romance is not a new one, and from the available literature is appears that the workplace is an ideal environment for meeting, dating, and even falling in love with a co-worker. According to the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP), a recent study showed that "…40% of the respondents" to a survey reported they met their future spouse "at or through work."
In the Kansas City Business Journal another survey (conducted by CareerBuilder.com) is presented that shows "more than a third" of 7,000 individuals that responded to the poll have dated a co-worker (Hawley, 2012). Moreover, thirty-one percent of participants in the survey who admitted to having dated a co-worker said "…their office romances ended in marriage" (Hawley). Dating the boss in the workplace adds possible tension and stress to both individuals on some level, but the survey that Hawley references shows that "Almost one in five people (18%) say they've dated their boss"; 35% of women say they have dated a supervisor or superior person compared with only 23% of men (Hawley).
The responses to the CareerBuilder.com survey show that 37% of those who have had workplace romances have kept those relationships a secret (Hawley). Moreover, 19% of respondents say they are "more attracted to people who work in similar jobs" and 13% indicated that the most common "spark to a relationship" was meeting a co-worker somewhere outside of the work environment (Hawley).
In the research presented by SIOP, Associate Professor Charles A. Pierce (University of Memphis) reports that "the development of interpersonal relationships at work is inevitable" since men and women spend "most of the weekday hours together." Pierce adds that there are positives; for example, workplace romance participants "…are happier with their jobs, and more motivated…and perform better" (SIOP),
However, there are a substantial number of drawbacks and serious issues that can occur when an office romance goes sour, or the two participants act in unprofessional ways during the workday.
The Scholarly Literature on Workplace Romance
Should Workplace Dating be Flat-Out Prohibited?
There are companies that are either considering approaches to managing workplace dating or flat-out deciding to prohibit workplace dating. In the Journal of Business Ethics the author (C. Boyd) writes that many executives have been fired or forced to resign due to "romantic entanglement" (Boyd, 2010). He mentions the head of the American Red Cross (in 2007); the President of the World Bank (2007); the President and CEO of Boeing; and other top executives (including the SVP of Marketing Communication from Wal-Mart) have either resigned or been fired for improper hierarchal romantic involvement. And there was the case of the newly-hired Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Business Review (Suzy Wetlaufer) who had an affair with the CEO of General Electric, Jack Welch; the interesting aspect to this case is that Wetlaufer was assigned to interview Welch and wound up getting intimately involved with the GE icon Welch (Boyd, 325).
Meanwhile, why are companies worried about relationships in the workplace? Boyd writes that many organizations feel they have a "moral duty" to protect employees from "sexuality in the workplace" (326). On a deeper level, some companies worry about the sparks that could turn into a terrible fire when married employees engage in adultery in the workplace, Boyd continues (326). The author mentions specific employment sectors in which bans on dating in the workplace are "grounded in an inherent conflict of interest" -- such as police officers or prison employees dating "known felons or the children of known felons" (327).
The reason behind the rule of no dating in the workplace has "twin themes," Boyd explains on 327: a) co-workers witnessing a pair of workers that are dating and to some degree "carrying on" in the workplace; this gossip is a distraction to all employees; and b) the "overall effect on productivity is considered harmful to the firm," and hence this attitude leads to the fact that dating should be banned (Boyd, 327). It boils down to what Schultz (2003) insists vis-a-vis workplace romance: "Classical organizational theory holds that sexuality and...
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