Workplace Romance And Employee Performance:Evidence From Healthcare Sector

Endeavors to foreground the complexities involved in the workplace and employee performance relationship and controversies over the(destructive or constructive)nature of the effect of workplace romance on employee performance are still infancy.The purpose of this thesis was to first examine the effect of workplace romance on employee performance,and then test the mediatory role of psychological wellbeing,affective commitment,and relational capital in the workplace romance and employee performance relationship.For this purpose,four studies were conducted.First examine the effect of workplace romance on employee job performance,and the mediatory role of psychological wellbeing,and then test the role of affective commitment foci as the parallel mediators in the workplace romance and employee performance relationship.Then we tested the moderating effects of gender and workplace romance type(lateral or hierarchical)on the indirect effect of workplace romance on employee performance.For this purpose,we conducted a survey of 311 doctors from five government teaching hospitals in Pakistan,we used structural equation modeling and bootstrapping to test these relationships.This study reveals that psychological wellbeing significantly fully mediates the positive relationship between workplace romance and job performance.This study also contributes by studying the relationship between workplace romance and employees' work effort and testing the mediatory role of employees' job involvement in this relationship.Then the study examines the moderating effect of workplace romance type(hierarchical or lateral)on the interrelationship between workplace romance,job involvement and employees' work effort.By collecting data from 405 Chinese doctors through a three-wave survey and using structural equation modeling and bootstrapping,we found that workplace romance is positively related to employees' work effort.Moreover,employees' job involvement fully mediates the positive relationship between workplace romance and employees' work effort.Another aim of the study is to examine the relationship between workplace romance and employees' job performance and test the role of affective commitment foci,namely affective co-worker commitment,affective supervisor commitment and affective organizational commitment as the parallel mediators in the workplace romance and employees' job performance relationship.Importantly,this study also aims to examine the moderating role of culture on the interrelations between workplace romance,affective commitment foci and employees' job performance.A two-wave(three months apart)survey data was collected from 312 paramedics � 162 and 150 from Pakistani and Chinese public-sector hospitals,respectively.Structural Equation Modelling(SEM),bootstrapping technique and multigroup analysis were used to test the interrelations.Results obtained using SEM show that workplace romance positively influences employee performance.We have also examined the mediatory role of relational capital as serial mediators in the workplace romance and employee performance relationship.By collecting data from 394 Chinese doctors through surveys and using structural equation modeling and bootstrapping,we found that lateral heterosexual workplace romance positively influences employee performance.As a key contribution to the literature,we found that the two serial mediators,relational capital,significantly mediate the effect of workplace romance on employee performance.Overall,the findings of all the four studies support the scholarship that portrays workplace romance as a constructive influence on employee performance and work related employee behaviors.The findings carry important implications for the policy makers and managers particularly for healthcare sector.The main innovations of the research are as follows:First,though there are many researches which have attempted to reveal the main factors and reasons of sexual harassment at work,this current study pioneer research that explores how workplace romance can affect the performance of the employees who are involved in relationship at workplace.Secondly,this study departs from the extent literature as this current study incorporated the mediatory role of psychological wellbeing in the relationship between workplace romance and employee performance as well as the moderating effects of gender and workplace romance types: lateral or hierarchical on the indirect effect of workplace romance on employee performance.Thirdly,this study also puts light on the relationship between workplace romance and employees' work effort as well as testing the mediatory role of employees' job involvement in this relationship.Fourthly,this is the first study of its kind which will examine the role of affective commitment foci as the parallel mediators in the workplace romance and employee performance relationship.Then examine the moderating effects of gender and workplace romance type(lateral or hierarchical)on the indirect effect of workplace romance on employee performance.Lastly,another significant contribution of this research is the empirical evidence of the substantial mediatory role of relational capital in the workplace romance and employee performance relationship.This research work also develops emphasis by presenting that affective effects of workplace romance have positive relational values.Which means,the positive effects of the workplace romance are not only limited to the workplace romance members;somewhat such effects go farther to personal knowledge and job related and psychological results to have positive,affective effects in the way of constructive sentiments,attention,confidence and mutuality on others.