"Family and Office Roles Mix" Article

"THE office joker. The mother hen. The king. The rebel. The gossip. The peacekeeper. The dude. Anyone who has ever been part of a workplace culture can probably recognize at least one of those characters in the cubicle next door."

I found an article in the New York Times called "Family and Office Roles Mix" by Sarah Kershaw that was absolutely wonderful. From the first two sentences in the article I could tell that this article was going to capture my full attention and pull me in.

As a whole, the article compares the workplace to a family. In this work place family the boss is considered the "disapproving and distant father," a manager is a "thinly veiled rejecting mother," and colleagues are "siblings in rivalry." The article said that co-workers can also feel like there are stepparents and a spouse. It also said that many businesses are trying to "gauge their effects at a time when emotions are running high. A growing number of business psychologist and executive coaches are also looking at the influence of birth order and other family roles and niches on office behavior."

This article was a very interesting piece to read because of the comparison of the workplace to a family. I would have never thought about the two being so closely related. I also wonder how the writer came up with the idea and where she went to start researching her topic.

A couple of quotes I liked in the article are: "When times are difficult economically, a workplace character identified as the “mother hen” — with a comforting voice of reason and empathy — may help raise the group’s spirit, Honey Langcaster-James, a psychologist, concluded. The 'office joker,' by contrast, “may decide that wisecracking” is 'no longer appropriate in such dire times.'", "The 'dude,' another character in the study, 'T-Mobile Workplace Motivation Report,' which is available online, is described as 'laid back and relaxed,' and this relaxed attitude 'also means that he/she doesn’t transfer pressure onto colleagues — a trait most workmates would be grateful for,' the report says."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/fashion/04roles.html?_r=1&em