Friends at Work: A Comparative Study of Work Attitudes in Seoul City Government and New Jersey State Government

Managers and scholars have always been ambivalent about the value of friendships among employees to the organization, although anyone who has worked in an office setting knows that working in a friendly place is much more preferable than the alternative. The major focus on office friendship has been on the negative side: Friendship can be related to nepotism; favoritism; gossip; displacement of loyalty; and negative, time-consuming organizational politics. This article offers a more balanced assessment of friendship. The authors examine the opportunity to form friendships and the strength of friendship between employees and their manager and their relationship to a positive work attitude. While examining two countries (South Korea and the United States), the authors find that although the opportunity to form friendships and the strength of that relationship vary by country, friendships between superior and subordinate can positively affect work attitudes.