Relationship Maintenance in Organizational Settings

Relationship maintenance efforts must take into account differences in power, the blending of work and personal relationships, task and role requirements, potential career implications, and third-party perceptions, among other factors. Work relationships are unique in a number of ways when compared to purely personal relationships. Power differences are commonplace in work relationships. Those enacting leadership and management roles bring to the relationship a degree of formally sanctioned position power. Status inequalities also result from differences in technical knowledge, differential access to key information, and location in the supervisor's social network, among other factors. Any given work relationship is nested within a complex system of vertical and horizontal networks. The communication of co-worker peers is influenced in part by their individual relationships with those in power and their perception of the supervisory relationships their peers enjoy. Indeed, task characteristics enhance or constrain opportunities for unscripted communication.