Interpersonal Relationships in Organizations: Building Better Pipes and Looking Through Prisms

Abstract

In this review, we attempt to make sense of the broad, complex, incoherent, fascinating yet frustrating literatures that implicate interpersonal relationships in organizations by focusing on how relationships are treated and what relationships do for organizations and the people therein. We leverage the existing literature to push the study of interpersonal relationships in organizations in three ways. First, we conceptualize relationships in ways that are deeper than are typically studied, in terms of the nature of interpersonal bonds, the trajectory of relationships, and how relationships are measured. Second, we build on multilevel research that demonstrates how (top-down) organization-level processes and relational systems impact dyadic relationships and associated outcomes, and how (bottom-up) those same relationships implicate organizational processes and outcomes. Third, we realize the potential of viewing relationships not just as pipes for the direct transmission of knowledge and socioemotional support but as prisms for studying indirect processes of attention and interpretation.