中国组织情境下的职场友谊

Workplace Friendship in Chinese Context

职场友谊是工作场所中的一种非正式关系。本文首先梳理了职场友谊的概念、结果变量、测量工具和在中国的研究进展。其次对西方的职场友谊量表在中国组织情境下的结构进行了分析并对量表的信度和效度进行了检验。探索性因素分析(N=520)表明,职场友谊由职场友谊机会和职场友谊强度构成。验证性因素分析(N=344)表明,双因素的结构模型对数据拟合最佳。为了更好地考察职场友谊量表的实证效度,本文选取主观幸福感、生活满意度和工作倦怠作为效标,结果表明职场友谊量表具有较好的实证效度。最后,本文探讨了研究存在的局限和未来研究的方向以及职场友谊在管理实践中的应用。

Friendship is an important component of human life. Most people today spend a significant portion of their time with colleagues at workplace, where therefore becomes one of the essential sources for building up friendship. Workplace friendship could help to meet socio-psychological needs of employees. Gallop reported a sur- vey that about 30% of American employees had a best friend within the organization they work for. Unfortunately, friendship has not been studied in management field until recently. Workplace friendship is defined as an informal relationship in the workplace. A few publications studied the structure and the measurement of workplace friendship and the possible antecedents and consequences in Western cultures. This paper tried to clarify the construct of workplace friendship in the Chinese context. Workplace friendship is defined as nonexclusive workplace relations that involve mutual trust, commitment, reciprocal liking and shared inter- ests or values among colleagues or organization members. It has two dimensions, friendship opportunity and friendship prevalence. Workplace friendship opportunity refers to ＂organizations allowed employees to talk with and established informal relations with other employees＂. Workplace friendship prevalence was defined as the level of interdepend- ence and difficulty of maintenance of the relationship. Research has showed that workplace friendship can increase employees＇ positive work attitude as well as their organizational productivity. At the individual level, workplace friendship can increase employees＇ organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and job involvement. At the organiza- tional level, workplace friendship can increase institutional participation, establish supportive and innovative cli- mates, motivate employees to better serve the organization＇s purpose, and increase organizational productivity. Work- place friendship is a variable worthy of study in the organizational sciences. Therefore, one of the goals of this study is to develop a valid measure of workplace friendship in Chinese context in order to facilitate more research. This paper first re-conceptualized the construct of workplace friendship put forward by western researchers in Chinese context, and then verified its criterion-related validity and reliability with a randomly selected large sample of employees from different types of companies. Results from an exploratory factor analysis （ N = 520） showed that work- place friendship consisted of two factors： workplace friendship opportunity （i. e. , I have the opportunity to get to know my coworkers; I am able to work with my coworkers to collectively solve problems; In my organization, I have the chance to talk informally and visit others; Communication among employees is encouraged by my organization; In- formal talk is tolerated by my organization as long as the work is completed. ） and workplace friendship prevalence （I have formed strong friendships at work; I can confide in people at work; I feel I can trust many coworkers a great deal; Being able to see my coworkers is one reason why I look forward to my job）. Item analysis showed that all of the 9 items met psychometric criteria. Results from an confirmatory factor analysis （N = 344, χ2/df = 2. 29, GFI = 0. 973 ,NFI =0. 960, CFI = 0. 977, TLI= 0956, RMSEA = 0. 061 ）indicated that the two-dimension scale for workplace friendship had very good construct validity. The internal consistency reliability of the scale was. 88 for both subscales. We used subjective well-being, life satisfaction, and work burnout as criteria for the validation study. Both workplace friendship opportunity and workplace friendship prevalence are positively related with subjective well-being and life satisfaction, and negatively related with job burnout. Results indicated that workplace friendship scale had a good empirical validity. The Chinese version of workplace friendship scale is reliable and valid for the application in Chi- na, which can be used in the assessment, training as well as organizational diagnosis. Implications for management practice and the limitations of this study are discussed. It is suggested that an in- digenous measure be developed in the future in order to fit the cultural background of the Chinese context. Anteced- ents and consequences of workplace friendship should be explored based on some theories. Moreover, scholars have always been ambivalent about the consequences of workplace friendship to the Organization. The negative conse- quences of workplace friendship （e. g. , nepotism, office gossip, distractions from work-related activities, using friend- ship to excuse or condone inappropriate conduct, problems of subordinates＇ loyalty） should be worthwhile to explore.