The Office Romance--It Can Titillate, Topple a Firm
Phillip Hunsaker is an expert in organizational psychology, but he had never seen a case like this. For lack of a more lurid label, call it office romance.
Called in to restructure a company, Hunsaker soon found almost-mutinous employees casting aspersions on management. The president of an Orange County insurance firm and a new department head were engaging in office romance. One of those most upset was another department head--the president’s former mistress.
“I couldn’t figure out why everyone was so unhappy,” said Hunsaker, who teaches business at the University of San Diego in between writing books on organizational behavior. “And then it was all crystal clear.”
Hunsaker deemed this episode in office romance--which he calls a booming problem in American business--a prime source of plummeting morale. He found productivity dropping sharply, while a growing preoccupation with the boss’ love life took its place. Worst of all, many employees felt sabotaged by the rise of an ex-stewardess who in their eyes held an unfair, unethical advantage.
They Were All Married
Adding to the sense of outrage, he said, was the fact that the president and his current mistress, as well as his former lover, were all married. Many employees felt a sense of shame, he said, that the head of the company (in Freudian terms, a kind of father figure) would so cavalierly flaunt an extramarital affair. The shame was made worse, he said, by many who felt exposed for having revealed their own values.
In short, a loathsome situation was worsened, he said, by the paranoia and powerlessness felt by employees.
Intrigued by the whole affair (pun unintended), Hunsaker conducted a study with then-USD graduate student Carolyn Anderson. Their survey culminated in a magazine piece, cogently titled, “Why There’s Romancing at the Office and Why It’s Everybody’s Problem.”
Hunsaker and Anderson say it’s worse than they feared.
“You could see it was having a tremendous impact on the company,” Hunsaker said. “Five years ago no one would have addressed these problems. In the old days, if a woman was involved with the boss and something went wrong, she was fired. How hard was it to fire a secretary? Nowadays, a woman is more likely a vice president or department head. And it’s never easy to get rid of the problem.”
In “the old days,” say, 5 to 10 years ago, a masters class in business administration would net one or two women, Hunsaker said. Now MBA classes are filled with equal numbers of men and women.
The Hunsaker-Anderson questionnaire focused on the role that proximity plays in an office where men and women interact constantly. Their third-party sampling polled 175 white-collar employees in a fleet of companies in Southern California. Each was asked to elaborate on the office romance he or she had most closely observed. Only “observers” were interviewed, since Hunsaker and Anderson were sure that they would never get honest answers from principals, particularly those in extramarital affairs.
Appearances Important
Much of what they found was fascinating, even startling. The most unusual finding was that the reality of an office romance didn’t matter--it was the illusion that one was happening that lit up a company like a small-town switchboard. Appearances were even more threatening, especially with a boss involved.
In an article published in the magazine of the American Management Assn., the authors concluded that organizations are natural breeding grounds for romantic involvements. Structured settings put people in “close proximity and create the interaction necessary for establishing intimate relationships,” they wrote.
“With people committed to working together, there is a desire to like the other person, if only because a pleasant work environment is more rewarding than an unpleasant one.”
Unfortunately, the line between friendship and romance in such settings is often lipstick thin, Hunsaker said. However, not all office liaisons are counterproductive--to those involved or to the company.
Despite consequences, office romances are as natural as benign flirtation, the authors found. “When people feel anxious, afraid, lonely or unsure of themselves,” they wrote, “the mere presence of another can be rewarding, because camaraderie mitigates negative feelings.”
Sixty-two percent of organizational romances were found to involve a man “in a higher position.” In only 30% of the cases were the man and woman at the same job level. In 68% of the romances, participants worked in the same vicinity; in 94% of the cases, they shared an office or adjoining suites. In cases where the man held the higher position, 44% shared an office or adjoining work spaces.
Eighty-six percent of those interviewed admitted to being exposed to more than one office romance.
Threatening Changes
In the 1980s, with new morality and the sexual revolution in full flower, why are such liaisons threatening?
“Anytime you change the status quo,” Hunsaker said, “it’s threatening. And anytime a married person gets involved, it’s very threatening.”
Society is still coping with the women’s movement, Anderson said. The role of women leaves a lot of people shaking their heads, not the least of whom are women themselves. Anderson thinks fallout from office romance is troubling to female executives, who, hoping to advance, are more closely scrutinized than male colleagues. “Casting-couch sexism” is, she said, a pervasive trend. And in terms of who suffers most in such pairings, it’s the woman every time.
In the case of the Orange County insurance company, Hunsaker was asked for a recommendation. His advice was to keep the ex-mistress, a highly competent go-getting executive, and fire the former flight attendant, who was getting in the way while offending almost everyone. The company president, angered by a recommendation he had solicited, did the opposite. He bought out the ex-mistress and kept the other woman on the company payroll.
The decision was hardly welcomed, Hunsaker said, and now the company is in a shambles.
Famous Bendix Case
History offers a precedent in such matters. Hunsaker mentioned the case of Mary Cunningham and Bill Agee at Bendix Corporation several years ago--a case that drew national attention.
Agee denied that Cunningham’s rapid rise had anything to do with “a personal relationship that we have.” Suspicions about the two grew within the company, especially so after national television cameras focused in on the pair sitting with former President Gerald Ford at the Republican National Convention.
Cunningham later resigned, saying all along that talk of the romance was malicious and untrue. Agee described her as “a friend of the family.” In June of 1982, Cunningham and Agee were married. Agee resigned from Bendix a year later. He and Cunningham now run Semper Enterprises, a venture capital and strategy consulting firm.
In the Hunsaker-Anderson survey, 65% of those responding said they had seen a couple together away from work and that such “sightings” often fueled talk of office romance. Other tip-offs were couples spending a lot of work time chatting, while 35% said “long lunches together” offered the best evidence for them that maybe a third-rate romance, low-rent rendezvous was taking place right there at work.
Sixty-one percent of those responding say office romancers were easier to get along with--they welcomed such a love-in. But 35% said females dealing with males in higher positions were shown onerous favoritism.
Anderson said office romances tended to fit into three categories:
- Love. Those thought to be truly in love, regardless of rank, were less likely to offend, and generally drew sympathy. The data indicated that “true love” frequently involved two unmarried people and often ended in marriage.
- Ego. Such adventurers were thought to be motivated more by excitement, satisfaction, sexual philandering, even danger. In these, Anderson said responses ranged from the “very negative to neutral.”
- Power. Easily the most threatening. Those thought to be motivated by power and prestige were more likely to be manipulative and evilly unethical in the minds of co-workers. They were thought to be the kind of conniving misfits that American television glorifies in the “Dallas” character J.R. Ewing. Any linkup between woman and boss was considered terribly inappropriate.
Seventy-nine percent reported office romances having a negative impact on organizations. Twenty-one percent reported positive effects.
Other negatives included: hostilities in the workplace; distorted communication; lowered output and production, with a scurrilous increase in office gossip; slower decision-making, and negative reactions by clients.
S.D. Takes Steps
The City of San Diego is sensitive to such data and has taken steps--short of official mandate--to handle a problem it views as potentially problematic.
Trudy Sopp manages the city’s organizational effectiveness program. Three years ago her department started a program for 1,600 city supervisors. Its title: “Sex and Power: Workplace Issues.”
For those who may be wondering, it was not related to the publicized allegations of a romance between former City Manager Ray Blair and assistant Sue Williams. Both denied there was any involvement. It wasn’t related to any one incident, Sopp said, just more to the need for examining “a lot of broad issues.”
It dealt with such issues as attractiveness, sexual harassment, seduction, transference and hazing. Sopp said harassment was the springboard for the program, with cities in the 1980s virtually being forced to examine that part of the issue.
On the subject of office romance, Sopp said that among 7,000 employees, the city had not encountered “a problem, per se.”
“But as more women move into the work force, into higher positions, it will be a problem,” she said. “And women will often be victims.
“We see it as a productivity issue, not a morality issue. Certainly, it is a morale issue, which is our concern. We’re doing all we can to keep morale up.”
Distracts From Decisions
Sopp said office romance almost always creates no-win situations. She pointed out that if John is sleeping with Sara and the two agree in a staff meeting, everyone whispers, “ ‘Oh, well, he’s sleeping with her.’ ” But if they disagree, everyone says, “ ‘Oh, they’re just having a fight.’ When they break up, it’s really awful.”
The solution? Policies and guidelines, Hunsaker said. In an age when companies are devoting time, energy and money to drug and alcohol programs, he finds it odd that another, potentially more vexing, problem is being ignored.
“First,” the authors wrote, “management needs to determine its position: Can the organizational climate tolerate intraoffice relationships? If not, a policy against them should be set up and enforced throughout the organization.
“Employees who break company policy should be warned that both participants will be asked to leave unless the relationship is terminated. Fair and consistent enforcement will give such a policy credibility, will not adversely affect morale and will decrease the incidence of gossip and grumbling about ‘special treatment.’ ”
A second course of action labeled “non-interference” was deemed “the more realistic and sensible choice” given the prevalence of romance at work and the effect of taboos on human behavior. “Non-interference” contains a caveat, however. If two lovers end up disrupting the workplace--if the affair can’t go on “quietly”--they run the risk of being reprimanded, even fired.
“Non-interference” is championed by civil libertarians and others fearing increasing encroachment on privacy and individual rights. Their opponents, citing contemporary sport, say it may be an athlete’s choice to consume drugs in the privacy of home, but in the long run, it can hurt the team.
Office romance, Hunsaker and Anderson say, is having a devastating impact on The Team--any team in American business.
