Workplace romance across different industries with a focus on hospitality and leisure

Abstract

• Interpersonal solidarity shows the strongest association with workplace romance. • The association between interpersonal solidarity and workplace romance is stronger for females. • The association between perceived value and workplace romance is stronger for males. • The association between interpersonal attraction and workplace romance is greater for higher job autonomy and lower injustice. • Job and ego motivations are more prominent when organizational policies are inadequate concerning office romance. Workplace romance is not a new phenomenon; yet, not many studies have investigated this matter in organizational behavior research. Leisure and hospitality industry holds the highest rate of workplace romance (57%) among different industries. In this study, following the theory of love, we have defined workplace romance as a romantic relationship among organization employees that is hypothesized to be determined by interpersonal solidarity, interpersonal attraction, physical attraction, motivation, perceived value, and attitude towards workplace romance. Using a sample of 603 employees from 13 industry categories, the proposed hypotheses were tested by employing both variance- and covariance-based structural equation modeling. Furthermore, the moderation impacts of organizational factors of injustice perception, culture and policies, organization size, and autonomy, as well as individual factors of previous experience, gender, and marital status along with the industry factor were tested. The results supported all the hypotheses except the hypothesis concerning the impact of attitude towards workplace romance. Findings also provide some interesting differences among moderating variables.