FLIRTING, JOKES, AND COMPLIMENTS: AN UNEXPECTED SOURCE OF ENTREPRENEURIAL WELL-BEING?
Journal
Organization Science Winter Conference
Type
conference poster
Date Issued
2024
Author(s)
Abstract
Even seemingly minor workplace interactions can influence well-being in powerful ways—perhaps especially for entrepreneurs who are particularly at risk of both enhanced and dimin-ished well-being (see Stephan et al., 2023). Here, we focus on a specific category of seemingly minor interactions: flirting, jokes, and physical compliments (i.e., non-work-related verbal or nonverbal behavior with a sexual component referred to as “social sexual behavior” or SSB; Gutek et al., 1990). Despite being common workplace experiences, the literature generally over-looks SSB, perhaps because of its polarizing name. But thus far, existing evidence of SSB’s effects on well-being is mixed, showing that SSB promotes (e.g., Sheppard et al., 2020) or harms (e.g., Berdahl & Aquino, 2009) workers’ well-being. Aligned with the OSWC 2024 theme to explore new directions with complex organizational phenomena, we aim to make sense of these conflicting findings by identifying when and why SSB helps or harms well-being. To do so, we leverage the entrepreneurship context as an ideal, “extreme setting” to test the effect of non-harassing SSB on well-being. we theorize that SSB can do both—help and harm employee well-being—depending on its frequency, because its frequency is a key signal of the act as nor-mative (or not), thus helping or harming entrepreneur well-being (respectively). To do this, we also take a non-linear approach, which is inherently complex but also represents a new direction for organizational behavior and entrepreneurship research—the core literatures to which we aim to contribute.
Funding(s)
HSG GFF
Language
English (United States)
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
Refereed
No
Event Location
Zurich
Event Date
February 2024
Division(s)