TY - JOUR PY - 2022// TI - Creating and sustaining service industry relationships and families: theorizing how personal workplace relationships both build community and perpetuate organizational violence JO - Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) A1 - Eger, Elizabeth K. A1 - Pollard, Emily A1 - Jones, Hannah E. A1 - Van Meter, Riki SP - e184 EP - e184 VL - 12 IS - 6 N2 - Service industry workers experience challenging labor conditions in the United States, including pay below the minimum wage, expected emotional labor, and harassment. Additionally, in part because they work long shifts in high stress environments in restaurants and bars, many build and form personal workplace relationships (PWRs). In 2021, we interviewed 38 service industry workers and managers during the COVID-19 pandemic where we examined occupational challenges they faced in the state of Texas, USA. Through our interpretive research, this essay showcases our inductive findings on how service industry workers and managers utilize communication to create and sustain PWRs. We identified how some PWRs are sustained through a unique form of occupational identification that cultivates a "service industry family", which we term familial personal workplace relationships (familial PWRs). This extends past organizational communication scholarship on family to consider occupational identification. Furthermore, our research reveals that while PWRs may build communities through care and support, they also perpetuate organizational violence, like sexual harassment and bullying.

Language: en

LA - en SN - 2076-328X UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/bs12060184 ID - ref1 ER -