Making sense of coworker friendships : choice, constraint, and (imagined) boundaries.

• Main Author: Tan, Eileen Yi Lin.
• Other Authors: Lim Khek Gee, Francis
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: DRNTU::Social sciences::Sociology
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/51665
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Workplace friendships are commonly assumed to be voluntarily chosen ties. But are these relationships purely a matter of personal choice? This study has three main concerns: it seeks to understand the different ways by which individuals negotiate and make sense of friendships with peer coworkers; it examines how freedom of choice in friendship may be circumscribed by social arrangements over which one has limited control; and it questions taken-for-granted distinctions between spheres of personal-life and work-life. Through semi-structured in-depth interviews, findings suggest that 1) besides personal choice, the development of workplace friendship is also shaped by the social organization of the workplace over which one has limited control; 2) the patterning of friendships represents a measure of individual agency within one’s socially governed friendship experience; and 3) boundaries separating work-life and personal-life are often blurred in the doing of workplace friendships. This study may add to existing workplace friendship literature, with a qualitative focus on individuals’ subjective meanings.