Problematic Relationships in the Workplace

Understanding and minimizing problematic relationships in the workplace are goals shared by those who work in and lead organizations as well as those who study organizations. This volume explores troublesome behaviors and patterns that shape relationships (e.g., hostility, bullying, incivility, and ostracism), presents insights gained from in-depth work on contexts and frameworks (e.g., telework, bureaucracies, cultural dimensions, and tokenism from a feminist perspective), and addresses the potential to restore these relationships to greater wellbeing (e.g., resilience, positive communication, civility, and forgiveness). Written by leading experts on problematic relationships in the workplace, this volume combines scholarship with applications that will be valuable in any organization. The new contributions in this second volume of Problematic Relationships in the Workplace extend the first volume’s work by exploring cutting-edge and emerging issues in the field.

Becky L. Omdahl (PhD, University of Wisconsin - Madison) is Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and Professor at Metropolitan State University. Her research explores the communication of emotion and its impact on empathy, stress, and burnout, and problematic relationships in the workplace. She has written articles for such journals as Communication Monographs, Western Journal of Communication, Journal of Advanced Nursing, and Advanced Interpersonal Communication, a chapter for Cognitive Appraisal, Emotion, and Empathy (Lawrence Erlbaum), and co-edited the first volume of this anthology.
Janie M. Harden Fritz (PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison) is Associate Professor of Communication and Rhetorical Studies at Duquesne University. She co-edited (with Becky L. Omdahl) the first volume of Problematic Relationships in the Workplace (2006), co-authored (with Ronald C. Arnett and Leeanne M. Bell) Communication Ethics Literacy: Dialogue and Difference (2009), and co-edited (with S. Alyssa Groom) Communication Ethics and Crisis: Negotiating Differences in Public and Private Spheres (2012). Her work appears in Management Communication Quarterly, Communication Research Reports, Journal of Public Management and Social Policy, Communication Monographs, Journal of Business Communication, Journal of Business Ethics, and in several edited volumes. Her current book, Professional Civility: Communicative Virtue at Work, is forthcoming with Peter Lang.