Workplace relationships set the tone for job performance

Your workplace relationships with co-workers as well as bosses have a huge impact on how you view the organization, and whether you perceive your work as being worthwhile. That perception has a direct bearing on your attitude and how you perform, according to a new study co-authored by a management professor at the W. P. Carey School of Business. The traditional "top-down" organizational culture tells only part of the story; it's often the person occupying the next cubicle that shapes who you are at work, the study found.

Motivational tapes and ergonomic chairs be damned: it's the person occupying the next cubicle that shapes who you are at work, according to David Sluss and Blake Ashforth, co-authors of a surprising new study, "Relational Identity and Identification: Defining Ourselves Through Work Relationships." Sluss, a doctoral student, and Ashforth, a management professor, argue that traditional management theory positing a top-down organizational culture tells only part of the story.

In the traditional scenario, the chief executive officer and senior management are social arbiters, setting the tone for everyone else. Employee satisfaction depends on the extent to which they identify with and assimilate into this boss-led corporate society. But Sluss and Ashforth's research indicates that the company culture mattering most is more localized, and stems from relationships with one's closest cohorts.

"The essential idea is that we define ourselves fundamentally through the people we work with. Yes, the organization sets the tone, but the organization remains pretty abstract. It's the people around us that make it feel real," Ashforth explains. It's almost as if each of us is a sun surrounded with our own solar system. My sun-flares affect your magnetic fields, and your trajectory makes an eclipse out of me.

The bigger the company, the more pronounced the localized affect. Tiny firms may actually function with a top-down cultural hierarchy, but Ashforth says a new hire at a Fortune 500 company will identify with his or her department denizens. "Working in a certain department in a particular city with specific peers sort of anchors you," he continues.

"Company culture remains abstract until brought to life by the local organization, the boss, the coworkers."

— Blake Ashforth, professor of management

Ashforth says how your boss and coworkers see themselves, their roles and the company inevitably have "a huge impact on how you see the organization, and whether you perceive it as being worthwhile." That perception — worthwhile or not worthwhile — has a direct bearing on your attitude and how you perform, he adds.

Does this mean your supervisor and closest co-workers can bolster or derail your career? Often, the answer is yes. Workers develop a "relational identity," as they engage in their respective manager-subordinate or coworker-coworker roles with each other.

Further, he says we each have role-based identities made up of the goals, values, beliefs, norms, interaction styles and "time horizons" typically associated with the role, "independent of who — what kind of person — may be enacting that role."

Say you're a manager. As head of a 10-person department that includes a subordinate named Bob, you make work assignments, monitor employee performance, communicate with other department heads and help plan company strategy. Your interaction with Bob is limited to the first two tasks; he isn't involved in your communication with department heads or part of company strategizing. Since the last two tasks don't apply, they're not part of your manager-subordinate relational identity with Bob. Relational identity focuses "on that portion of the role-based identity that is more or less relevant to one's role-relationship," Ashforth explains.

Plenty of previous management research indicates that trust, familiarity and empathy grow between manager-subordinate and coworker-coworker as they meet each other's expectations repeatedly, over time. That doesn't mean that people have the same idea of their relational identity, but they do "strive for agreement" by acting as their "agreed-upon self" in meetings, hallway encounters, even office parties. When you combine your role-based identity with your personal traits and interact with another employee, Ashforth says, you get a bonus: "A relational identity that is more than the sum of its parts."

Something else happens as work relationships mature over time. For example, someone who is promoted to management, brings along baggage — his or her expectations about what it's like to supervise others. Ashforth calls this "generalized relational identity." Once actually functioning as a supervisor of specific individuals, this generalized, or abstract knowledge, is "translated into grounded action."

Each experience supervising direct reports, in turn, fleshes out the new manager's generalized relational identity, building confidence and influencing his approach to new management challenges. This reciprocal influence plays out moment by moment in the workplace.

Sluss and Ashforth's findings raise an interesting question: if different divisions, offices, even departments develop their own particular taboos and work ethic, how can top management get a reading on corporate culture? Probably not by reading production reports, Ashforth says.

He once worked for a bank that graded management performance by their numbers. "Numbers can be bandied about. Any manager can jack up numbers to look good for the short term, hoping to get promoted before what they've let slide catches up with them," he notes. So units with satisfactory numbers may actually be morphing into a pathological culture.

His advice: look beyond numbers to individuals through internal surveying of morale and job satisfaction, as well as monitoring turnover. Whenever possible, talk to people in small groups, or one-on-one, and ask how they perceive the company and their role within the organization.

If a particular culture is already pathological, it may be hard for employees to hear what you're asking, though, "because disaffected employees believe their manager represents the company," he explains. Unfortunately, behavioral styles in the workplace can be just as resistant to change as personal bad habits like smoking.

A healthy workplace is one in which newcomers are welcomed, but not encouraged to make themselves over into "mini-me's" to fit in. "That becomes dangerous, leading to insularity. It's better to foster respect for each person's strengths, allowing employees to find their own way to common goals," Ashforth says.

Which companies have what he considers a healthy relational culture? That's easy, he says – Southwest Airlines, with more than 31,000 employees, local culture committees that espouse a "warrior spirit" combined with "servant leadership." Southwest "explicitly puts employees ahead of customers, which sounds bizarre. But developing and honoring employees works," he concludes." (Cable-TV watchers can see Southwest Airlines' culture in action, in the form of the reality show, "Airline," which airs on the Arts and Entertainment Channel).

Sluss is currently working on his doctoral dissertation, which extends these arguments. Ashforth is the author of "Role Transitions in Organizational Life: An Identity-Based Perspective" as well as more than 70 journal articles and book chapters.