Under the Eye of the Family: Exploring Family Relationships at Work

Abstract

Organizational scholars identify positive results from working alongside “particular” coworkers. In contrast to formal, separable relationships (e.g., coworkers, supervisory relationships), we focus on inseparable relationships in our study of family relationships at work. Scholars have emphasized these family relationships as providing socio-emotional benefits. At the same time, social identity theory suggests that individuals experience a situated struggle over multiple selves at work as they try to negotiate individual and relational demands, alongside competing organizational norms, managerial prescriptions and conflicting role expectations. Against this context, we examine how individuals experience their family relationships at work and establish their ‘situationally salient’ self in family relations at work. Our qualitative study of 48 employees belonging to 19 family groups in the same company indicates that family relationships are distinguishable from other inseparable relationships in that they are composed of interactions based on family support. In addition, they have a monitoring function and are governed by family norms which are experienced as being “under the eye” of the family. Our findings further demonstrate that individuals seek to establish their situationally salient self in these family relationships by having an interdependent or independent self-construal. We offer a ‘family at work’ framework that highlights how establishing a situationally salient self results in two paths to social enrichment and theorizes the conditions under which family relationships at work can amplify rather than attenuate social enrichment.