The Role of Intimacy at Work

THE ROLE OF INTIMACY AT WORK: INTERACTIONS & RELATIONSHIPS IN THE MODERN ORGANISATION

I- Introduction :

This case study deals with a research about intimacy at work, intimacy refers to relationships which revolve around reacting to the other person as an individual rather than an organizational position. Indeed intimacy can lead to friendship or even to romance.

The aim of this research is to illustrate different organizational cultures and offer suggestions as to the effect each might have on individuals and organizational processes.

The study is taking place in two departments, A and B, which are completely different. Department A is a large multi-site department, it employs 70 academic staff and it has 600 students across 3 years and 150 postgraduates.

Department B is smaller and operates from a single location, it employs 28 academic staff, 9 researchers and has 160 postgraduate students.

We are going to study the main difference between the two departments and how the intimacy affects them.

1) Bureaucracy theory: Personal relationship between organizational participants

In the department A, the structure seems large and rigid because personalized relationships are excluded. The culture in this department revolves around the work ethic because workers are entirely devoting to their job and adhere rigidly to rules.

For example, they avoid intimacy with other workers not having any extraneous contact with them except for work because any close relationship with others is considered as dangerous, unnecessary and distracting. They don’t want to digress from work, so they only focus on it avoiding intimacy and friendship. Indeed romance is forbidden, this shows a desire for rationality by not wanting to mix work with personal relationships.

The communication between people is therefore work-related and formalized, so they don’t feel comfortable with people having conversation about anything that is not to do with work. Indeed, they reduce the communication exclusively for work because they don’t socialize and establish relationship beyond the requirements of their role. We can say that the few relationships in this department are between same-status individuals.

There is a lack of communication between the different departmental sites, they only use telephone, internal mail and computer links. Indeed, there is no interpersonal relationship.

This formal organization is an inflexible and structured phenomenon and should be supplemented by an informal organization for the balance thereof.

In this formal organization, there is a standard organization of chart, which represents