Positive and Negative Workplace Relationships, Social Satisfaction, and Organizational Attachment

Abstract

We examine how employees’ centrality in the networks of positively valenced ties (e.g., friendship, advice) and negatively valenced ties (e.g., avoidance) at work interact to affect these employees’ organizational attachment. Using 2 different samples (154 employees in a division of a food and animal science organization and 144 employees in a product development firm), we found that employees’ centrality in positive and negative tie networks at work were related to their organizational attachment indirectly via their impact on employees’ satisfaction with their workplace relationships. Further, interaction results in both studies suggest that the effect of employees’ centrality in positive tie networks on their satisfaction with workplace social relationships was stronger when employees had more negative relationships but was irrelevant when employees had fewer negative ties. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Keywords: negative relationships, network centrality, work attitudes, organizational attachment