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The perils of dating your boss

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Journal of Social and Personal Relationships
Authors:
Suzanne Chan-Serafin
Suzanne Chan-Serafin
Suzanne Chan-Serafin
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Lydia Teo
Lydia Teo
Lydia Teo
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Amirali Minbashian at UNSW Sydney
Amirali Minbashian
David Cheng at Australian National University
David Cheng
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Abstract and Figures

Engaging in romantic relationships at work, especially with one’s superiors (i.e., hierarchical workplace romance; [HWR]), has generally been shown to negatively impact the participants involved. However, less attention has focused on its impact on the career advancement of lower status romance participants and when such an impact is exacerbated. Two experiments show that third-party evaluators were less likely to promote (Study 1) and select lower status HWR participants for training opportunities (Study 2) than their counterparts not in an HWR. Moreover, the negative career ramification of an HWR was stronger for men romantically involved with their female superiors than women with their male superiors (Study 2). This research highlights the need for organizational members to be aware of biases associated with HWR and gender role–based status expectations because past achievements may be discounted for lower status HWR participants, especially men.
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Article
The perils of dating
your boss: The role of
hierarchical workplace
romance and sex on
evaluators’ career
advancement decisions
for lower status
romance participants
Suzanne Chan-Serafin
1
, Lydia Teo
1
,
Amirali Minbashian
1
, David Cheng
2
, and Lu Wang
1
Abstract
Engaging in romantic relationships at work, especially with one’s superiors (i.e., hier-
archical workplace romance; [HWR]), has generally been shown to negatively impact the
participants involved. However, less attention has focused on its impact on the career
advancement of lower status romance participants and when such an impact is exa-
cerbated. Two experiments show that third-party evaluators were less likely to promote
(Study 1) and select lower status HWR participants for training opportunities (Study 2)
than their counterparts not in an HWR. Moreover, the negative career ramification of an
HWR was stronger for men romantically involved with their female superiors than
women with their male superiors (Study 2). This research highlights the need for
organizational members to be aware of biases associated with HWR and gender role–
based status expectations because past achievements may be discounted for lower
status HWR participants, especially men.
1
University of New South Wales, Australia
2
Australian National University, Australia
Corresponding author:
Suzanne Chan-Serafin, School of Management, UNSW Business School, University of New South Wales,
Sydney, New South Wales 2052, Australia.
Email: s.chan-serafin@unsw.edu.au
Journal of Social and
Personal Relationships
2017, Vol. 34(3) 309–333
ªThe Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/0265407516635285
journals.sagepub.com/home/spr
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