Workplace Romance 2.0: Developing a Communication Ethics Model to Address Potential Sexual Harassment from Inappropriate Social Media Contacts Between Coworkers

Lisa Mainiero () and Kevin Jones ()

Journal of Business Ethics, 2013, vol. 114, issue 2, 367-379

Abstract: This article examines ethical implications from workplace romances that may subsequently turn into sexual harassment through the use of social media technologies, such as YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, text messaging, IMing, and other forms of digital communication between office colleagues. We examine common ethical models such as Jones (Acad Manag Rev 16:366–395, 1991 ) issue-contingent decision-making model, Rest’s (Moral development: Advances in research and theory, 1986 ) Stages of Ethical Decision-Making model, and Pierce and Aguinis’s (J Org Behav 26(6):727–732, 2005 ) review of workplace romance versus sexual harassment issues. The article makes a contribution by developing a new communication ethics model that includes response positive and response negative contingencies to guide decision-making about inappropriate social media contacts that spillover into the workplace. In addition, we recommend that human resource personnel take a more active role in communicating appropriate ethical rules of conduct concerning the use of social media technologies inside and outside the office. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2013

Keywords: Business ethics; Communication ethics; Facebook; Human resource codes of conduct; Human resource guidelines; LinkedIn; Office romance; Sexual harassment; Social media technologies; Twitter; Tumblr; Workplace romance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10551-012-1349-8 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:114:y:2013:i:2:p:367-379

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10551/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10551-012-1349-8

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Ethics is currently edited by Michelle Greenwood and R. Edward Freeman

More articles in Journal of Business Ethics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().