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I think that one of the things
that we found in the study is that people will be much more
comfortable connecting to other
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people who disclose personal
information, right? And it doesn't have to be deeply
intimate personal information,
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right? By the way, cute dog pics
are a very, very hot commodity, and you know, if you have a cute
dog and you want to post
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pictures of them, that's a very
good strategy. Because people always love them, and they feel
like they know you, and they
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feel connected to you. Welcome
to <i>The Ripple Effect</i>, the podcast that takes you on a
journey through the minds of
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Wharton faculty. I'm your host,
Dan Loney, and in each episode, we'll be diving deep into the
inspiration behind the ground-
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breaking research that Wharton
professors have conducted and exploring how their findings
resonate with the world today.
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The office culture has a variety
of components to it, but one of the more compelling is that
boundary between colleagues
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inside of the office, but also
being friends outside of it. It is a challenge because it can
blur the lines of what is
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normally accepted. Wharton's.
Nancy Rothbard was part of research done in 2022 on this
topic, which remains at the
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forefront of office etiquette.
And Nancy joins us right now. Nancy, great to talk to you
again. How are you?
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Great, Dan. Wonderful to talk
with you. What was it that drove you in the first place to look
at this as an important area?
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Well, I've actually been very—
I've been obsessed, actually, over the last few years, with
online social media and how it
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is fundamentally transforming
our work relationships as well as our non-work relationships.
But— but I'm primarily
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interested in the work
relationships, and— and how we interact with people at work.
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And so this was in part, looking at the information that
employees collected in the
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course of working with others. Yeah, so we— we did several studies where we asked people
about their interactions with
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people at work. We asked them to
recollect various situations that they had found themselves
in, and we also asked them
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about, you know, current
situations. We also relied on an archival data set that was— that
was a nationally representative
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sample around, you know, how
people used social media at work. How has the influx of
social media in our lives every
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day kind of impacted that— that
work process that we have, on a day to day basis?
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Well, I think
one of the things that was really interesting to us was
just the prevalence of it,
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right? Most people are using
some form of social media to connect with their colleagues in
some way or another, and what
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that social media form is might
vary across person and across type of role. You know, across
generation. You know, there are
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different— different platforms
that are more prevalent with college-student-aged students, or
younger— younger employees, and
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others that are more prevalent
with, you know, older employees, right? And so it can vary what
platform you're using. But by
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and large, people are connected
with their colleagues on— on one of these platforms, very often.
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And as you kind of alluded to, that relationship, in terms of
the role that each person has
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within the company, within the
office— that becomes, I guess, kind of an important, you know,
point of focus of who, maybe, you
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do or do not get in touch with
outside of the office. Absolutely. As we started to
really examine these questions,
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we actually first started with
some interviews with people. And one of the things that really
struck me when we were talking
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with people about this
phenomenon was that the hierarchical boundary between
levels in organizations, right—
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boss, subordinate— really was
powerful. It came up a lot in terms of how people thought
about these questions. You know,
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they might be very comfortable
connecting with peers, but then very uncomfortable connecting
across levels. And one of the
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funniest things to me was when
we would talk to people about this, a lot of times they would
equate connecting with somebody
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on, you know— connecting with a
boss on something like Facebook or Instagram as— as equivalent to
connecting with their mother,
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right? It was sort of the same
horror that some— that they would— they would express as they
talked about those relationships.
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All right, so
then, how should both companies and the employees think about
that process? Because there are
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some dynamics that probably
could get a little tricky along the way. Absolutely. I mean, I
think that
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a lot of companies, for example,
have social media policies. And it's not necessarily who
you're connecting with,
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typically, but more what you are
posting. Or, you know— you know, are you allowed to post stuff
about work or about people at
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work? Or sometimes it is about
who you're allowed to connect with, right? So that there's no
conflicts of interest. And so
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there are policies that some
organizations have. But what I would also say is that
connecting on social media is
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also a way of just, you know—
especially throughout the last couple of years where we've
engaged in more remote work,
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more hybrid work— it's also an
opportunity to know what's going on in people's lives, right? So
just banning it entirely may not
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be the right approach. One has
to think about— judiciously. How do— how do— who do you
connect with, and what do you
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disclose to them? And you know,
what is that relationship that you're willing to cross that
boundary so that you're willing
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to blur the line between
professional and personal? Well, one of the things I found
interesting is that you also
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talk about this element of self
disclosure, and the fact that that can kind of ease and better
the opportunity to have a
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relationship or a friendship
outside of the office when somebody is maybe talking about
their kids or talking about the
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traffic or, you know, some
component outside of what would normally be discussed in terms
of the business.
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Absolutely, I think that one of the things
that we found in the study is that people will be much more
comfortable connecting to other
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people who disclose personal
information, right? And it doesn't have to be deeply
intimate personal information,
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right? By the way, cute dog pics
are— are a very, very hot commodity. And you know, if you
have a cute dog and you want to
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post pictures of them, that's a—
that's a very good strategy, because people always love them,
and they feel like they know
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you, and they— they feel
connected to you, and they— it gives them a sense of warmth
that you're displaying, and a
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feeling that they— they know
something about you that's important, and that's, you know,
not fake. You know, or surface
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level. And so that personal
disclosure really helps to create a bond between you and
your fellow coworkers.
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How do you think, then, that
potentially impacts the culture within the office? Because for a long time,
I remember you used to hear the
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old story, "Don't— don't talk
with your boss outside of the walls." You know, once you leave
for the for the day, that's it.
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You're done. But it seems like
that's changing a little bit. So I think that that has changed a
little bit. But what we also
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found in this study was a gender
difference in terms of the expectation around self
disclosure and disclosure of
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personal information. So we— we
found, it— you know, we found a very complex three-way
interaction effect between
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whether you're— you're a boss,
and, you know, a boss versus a peer, for example. And whether
you are disclosing or not, and
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your gender. And so what we
found was that women who disclosed more personal
information were— they were— that
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really helped them, actually.
That helped people. Women bosses who disclosed personal
information, people really
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responded positively to that.
For male bosses, interestingly, that personal disclosure didn't
help as much. And in fact,
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sometimes what people would say—
we actually had both quantitative and qualitative
data in these studies. And one
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of the quotes that I'll never
forget is, you know, somebody was saying about a male boss who
disclosed personal information,
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you know, "I found it creepy." You
know, like— and other— other comments about some of these
male bosses were like, you know,
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"Is he trying to spy on me?"
Right? You know? So— so it wasn't quite as benign, in
terms of how it was interpreted
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when it was a male boss who was
disclosing. So interestingly, women bosses, like— this is
one way in which gender role
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stereotypes around warmth and
disclosure and connection were helping women bosses to kind of
be connected with others.
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But if to a degree, we've kind
of opened up this— I don't know if Pandora's box is the right term to
use, but we've kind of opened it
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up when you think about remote
work and messaging channels, and the fact that in many cases,
messaging channels aren't just
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about work anymore. There's
usually a channel about what your life— what's going on in
your life as well. So we've— with
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technology, kind of brought this
to the front. Absolutely. And some people
really are very comfortable with
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that, and really embrace it. And
they— they love the blurring of the work/non-work boundary, and
they're— they just feel like this
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is a way to make— you know,
create a work family, right? Whereas other people feel less
comfortable with that
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approach. And they— they— I
called— I've done a lot of work on what I call integrators
versus segmenters. And
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integrators are the ones that
are very comfortable with blurring that boundary, where
segmenters want to keep that
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bright line between the personal
and the professional, and they feel really a lot of distress
when that line is crossed. And
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so you have to really pay
attention, as a colleague, to how other people, how they like to interact around
this, and understand that your
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preference may not be their
preference. And so respecting their boundaries may be also an
important element to keep in mind.
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I mentioned you did this
originally, this research, in 2022, but here we are a couple of
years later. What did this
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research tell you then, but also
how this process has kind of developed over the last couple
of years?
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Well, I mean, I actually
did this research both pre-, during and post-pandemic. Okay.
So I will say that, you know,
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it's been— I've actually had a
lot of different times in which the research was done. And I
think that it's become this
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connection, this social
connection, via social media and online platforms, has become in
some ways even more important
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in the world we're living in
now, where there is a lot, as you say, more more platforms, more remote
work, more hybrid work, where we
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need to find ways to connect in meaningful ways with our
colleagues. And it's not— we're
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not always just standing around
the water cooler. And so we have to find those ways to feel like
we get— we've gotten to know
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people. And so sometimes the
online social media provides a channel with which we can— we
can really deepen those
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relationships in a way that is
also giving equal access to people, right? Where they— you
know, some people might be,
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you know, working more remotely
than others. But you know, having that— that access to
what's going on in people's
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lives can help you form and
build lasting relationships. Nancy, great to talk to you as
always again. Thank you.
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Thanks so much, Dan. Thank you.
Nancy Rothbard, Management Professor and Deputy Dean here at the
Wharton School.
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Thank you for listening to <i>The Ripple
Effect</i>. We hope you found this episode
00:12:51
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00:12:58
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