Personal Workplace Relationships: Unifying an Understudied Area of Organizational and Personal Life.

Relationships that cross the work-life domain have long been of interest to scholars in multiple disciplines, including Communication, Management, and Psychology. Close relationships that span work-life borders are called personal workplace relationships. Personal workplace relationships are voluntary informal relationships between two members of the same organization. These relationships are mutual and consensual and have a relatively strong emotional component. They involve the partners knowing and communicating with each other as unique individuals. The goal of this Special Issue ("Personal Workplace Relationships: Implications for Work and Life in a Rapidly Changing Society") is to explore this specific form of work-life intersection. To that end, we present the scholarly work of researchers from diverse backgrounds who share the goal of better understanding workplace relationships. In this opening essay, we describe how we began to study this area, we preview the articles in this Special Issue, and we conclude with recommendations for future research on personal workplace relationships.

Young Love at Work: Perceived Effects of Workplace Romance among Millennial Generation Organizational Members.

This study examined workplace romance perceptions among Millennial employees who had participated in a workplace romance and those who had observed one. Two samples (workplace romance partners and coworkers) of 18- to 29-year-old employees completed questionnaires in which they reported their perceptions of workplace romance's positive and negative effects. The relationships between the effects and respondent role (partner/coworker), sex (male/female), and the romance's status dynamic (peer-peer/hierarchical) were also examined. Results indicate Millennial workplace romance partners focused on personal benefits and difficulties, whereas coworkers tended to identify organizational impacts. Women were more likely than men to identify drawbacks of workplace romance, and employees reporting on hierarchical versus peer-peer romances were more likely to identify the partners gaining workplace advantages. Implications for work-life blending and workplace romance policies geared toward Millennial organizational members are discussed.

Is basic personality related to violent and non-violent video game play and preferences?

Based on the uses and gratifications perspective, personality was expected to relate to violent video game play frequency and game preferences. Participants completed measures of personality and frequency of violent video game play, and identified their most frequently played video games. Results indicate that individuals higher in openness but lower in agreeableness played violent video games more frequently. In addition, more open and extroverted but less agreeable and neurotic individuals generally preferred to play video games that are more violent. Results suggest personality may be more predictive of violent video game use than traditional media use, though the predictive personality dimensions may be consistent across media types.